PGIJANFEBMAGAZINE2021a

50 PUBLIC GAMING INTERNATIONAL • JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2021 taken in as a result. No longer do we just run ads and hope. Now there is monthly analysis and review to ensure our tactics stay aligned with our goals. Evolving from our naiveté, we now have a fully built-out digital lottery group, staffed by people steeped in the digital experience, led by a tech guru with an MBA who has forgotten more about digital commerce than I will ever know. But the adoption of internet requires us to think in more analytical way than we had previously. WAY MORE FIRE We were approached during the 2019/2020 Legislative session to draft a sports betting bill… under the Lottery’s auspices. So we wrote the bill, and included everything you possibly can in a sports betting bill, assuming that they would remove certain provisions, add new ones, and alter others. We also thought that various special interests would weigh in on certain aspects, perhaps object to terms and conditions that we deemed relevant, and that would have a significant impact. Much to our surprise and abject terror, the Legislature approved the bill almost untouched. Really wasn’t expecting that. Throughout the process, pundits kept suggesting that outside forces were driving the enactment of the bill and its language. “Company X must have done this?” “Had to be Y company?” Truth was much simpler – our Chief Compliance Officer John Conforti sat in his office, studied the various bills from around the US, and wrote what he thought was the best piece of law. I may have made a few changes, and we submitted it, just the two of us. The law had assumed it would take a year to realize revenues. The Governor wanted it earlier – much earlier. He really wanted to be able to take the first bet on the Super Bowl, on the new platform. He was able to place the first bet much ahead of our schedule, and ahead of the NFL Playoffs. We executed a contract with DraftKings on November 25th and launched mobile and internet December 30th, more than six months earlier than predicted. I’m not certain if it was the fastest contract execution to launch, but it sure felt like it. Governor Sununu placed the first bet, live on television and the program has been tremendously successful, building out both a first class mobile/internet experience and two top-notch retail facilities that are entertainment destinations. THE VIEW BACK I love to tell the folks I work with to stand back and look at the mountain we climbed; from the oldest lottery in the US that in many ways acted like it, to a fully digital lottery that now offers a range of experi- ences, both physical and virtual. We still do everything we did twenty years ago. We just try to keep up to date with advances that happened twenty minutes ago. Like what Mr. Darwin didn’t say, adaptation has been key to our evolution. Q “We hadn’t pushed for gaming expansion, we stayed in our lane and did the job. So when the prospect of regulating Keno and iLottery came about, the Legislature, through all their deliberations, never opposed it on competency grounds.” I. Hughes: Most of the basic corner- stones to success in this industry are not changing. For instance, the determination of who operates the games and how they are regulated has always had a critical bearing on the success of the operator’s business model. In the realm of things we can’t necessarily control but need to understand are regulatory issues that can make or break huge swaths of the gaming market-place for the operator. GLI’s core competency has always been to assist regulators and manufacturers in their efforts to ensure compliance and deliver a gaming experience aligned with public policy objectives as defined by legislative and regulatory statutes. To that end, we make it our business to understand the legislative process, the values and priorities of shapers of public policy, and the ways those are being translated into new laws that define our industry. Security and integrity have always been mission-critical. Without that, you have no players. The new inflexion point in this space is that digital connectivity creates additional layers of vulnerability and the methods of cyber-crime are constantly changing. That makes preservation of security and integrity a dynamic and never- ending initiative. Fundamental to success has always been and continues to be to create the best player experience. Content is king but the new inflexion point that operators are thinking about is how the overall player experience functions as an ecosystem that includes more than the game itself. The whole experience from when you first enter the ecosystem, maybe by seeing an ad’ somewhere or a link on social media, to logging on and accessing the games to checking your account, to the responsible gaming and marcomm’ messages you receive … if everything is fun, easy, convenient, intuitive, then you will want to come back and play again. And that brings us to another forward-leaning challenge: brand loyalty is much more fleeting than ever. Even when the consumer loves your brand and your games, they are still going to try other brands. The willingness and ability of the consumer to experiment with other brands will make the cost of new player acquisition go down. But it will also make it more challenging than ever to retain repeat player-ship. Amplifying that challenge will be the further fragmentation of the recre- ational gaming market. There used to be a handful of network TV stations. Now there are hundreds of channels the average consumer can tune into. Likewise, there used to be a handful of recreational gaming options – mainly lottery and casinos. Now there are new games and channels of distribution and devices that deliver access to new game categories popping up every day. The key success-driver going forward will be continuous ongoing improvement to retain player-ship. Delivering the best games within the most positive overall player experience will be more mission- critical than ever. Q Charles McIntyre continued from page 18