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July/August 2016 // PUBLIC GAMING INTERNATIONAL //
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API’s are imperative for the Lottery
industry to meet the needs of the mod-
ern retailer. I think we have good sup-
port from the vendor community. We
just need to accelerate our efforts. We
all have IP and our R&D investment
to protect, but collectively we need to
pursue the best possible solution for the
industry as a whole. The single API is
not technical rocket science. It just re-
quires that we collectively come together
to establish that solution and implement
it on the back end.
Gary Grief:
Do we have the right
contractual relationships and business
models with our vendors to move us
from where we are to where we need to
be regarding API?
Gardner Gurney:
I think we do have
the right contractual relationships. It’s
about being creative. When you write
an RFP, insert language requiring the
vendor to commit to research. It doesn’t
even need to be specific, but it should re-
quire a commitment to invest a specific
monetary amount to research within a
pre-set time, like 12 or 24 months.
Carole Hedinger:
Any lottery can
write in an RFP a requirement for either
open systems or the ability to connect
with open systems. The modern RFP
should look much different than it did
even a few years ago. We need to think
about how our needs have evolved, and
future-proof by thinking about how
they will be evolving over the next num-
ber of years.
Gary Grief:
Terry is the chair of the
NASPL retail subcommittee. Tell us
where we’re going with that.
Terry Presta:
We have to get into the
retailers’ point-of-sale system, and the
API is the best way to do that. In my
first year as director, our largest retailer
of lottery products, increased from 12 to
20 facings. After a year, they reduced us
back to 8 because we were slowing up
their lines. We’re really not in-lane any-
where in groceries in America because
they’re not going to put up with us slow-
ing their lines down. That’s why it is so
important for us to get into the point-
of-sale in whatever fashion that takes.
API’s are a key component to making
that happen.
Retailers know they need to sell our
product. We are sometimes frustrated
because they tend to think of Lottery as
a “managed” category as opposed to a
“growth” category. Well, there’s a reason
for that. We treat our own product like
it is a “managed” category. If we cared
about growing sales, we would meet the
needs of our customers, i.e. the retailers,
for improved IT and operational sup-
port systems, starting with a standard-
ized API. Right now, retailers think of
Lottery as a product they need to sell
because it draws customers into the
store and if they don’t sell it then the
customer will go to the competition to
buy it. Their main goal is to not lose
money on Lottery and not let it slow
down their lines too much. That mind-
set is just not a great recipe for driving
sales. We need to show them that we
mean business. We need to treat them
like a customer, help them decrease the
cost and increase the profit for them to
sell Lottery.
It’s not just about enhancing service to
our retail partners. The open API bene-
fits us too. It increases the speed to mar-
ket of new technologies and new games.
It enables third-party innovation to be
implemented at a fraction of the cost to
replicate the deployment across differ-
ent IT platforms. These are benefits that
would clearly translate into increased
sales and net funds for Lottery.
Gary Grief:
How can we make the
cashless initiative and API work togeth-
er to expand our retailer footprint and
make the point of purchase easier for the
consumer?
Gardner Gurney:
Cashless and APIs
line up perfectly together. In New York,
for the past three or four years, we’ve
been using redemption of instant tick-
ets at self-serve. When someone redeems
their ticket at self-serve, they can im-
mediately play—they don’t have to take
cash out of their pocket. Sales were
maybe $10,000 a week in the beginning,
and now we’re doing $2 million a week
in self-validation at self-serve. It makes
it easy for the player to continue to play
with their winnings. This is an example
of how an API enables a cashless applica-
tion to make it easier for the consumer
to play the lottery.
Gary Grief:
The feasibility of innovat-
ing becomes a matter of cost and ROI.
And isn’t that about getting everybody to
agree that the benefits of implementing
the standard API exceed the costs?
Carole Hedinger:
We need to start
having this discussion. Vendors and lot-
teries need to be clarifying the costs, the
values, the details of implementation,
and work it out. Enabling standardized
API’s that operate across multiple lotter-
ies is certainly not an issue that will solve
itself or work itself out over time. We
need to get actively engaged, address the
issue head-on, find the common ground
of what we want, decide on an action-
plan, and make it happen.
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