Public Gaming November/December 2020

24 PUBLIC GAMING INTERNATIONAL • NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2020 We've also made signi cant investments in our marketing technology platforms, so we need to focus on how we are using it to deliver a personalised experience for our customers. We also want to optimise and make our advertising as e cient as possible. Personalisation is a large focus for us over the next three years. Where do you see the future of digital retail going in the next few years? In digital and technology things move so quickly that it can be challenging to think where you will be in a year, let alone three or ve years! I’ve always subscribed to the idea of thinking about what might not change in the future as it gives you an anchor from which to plan. What we know is that people will always want the chance to dream about winning the big one, and our business will conduct lottery draws each and every day. But how they buy their ticket, where they buy their ticket, how they check their numbers – those are the things that can change. By looking at what doesn't change, it gives you more control over the things that can change. Our greatest opportunity over the new few years is bringing our online and in-store experiences even closer together and giving our customers as much choice as possible, be it celebrating a win with a local retailer, creating a syndicate with friends online or checking results with Alexa! We also ask ourselves how dramatically does the landscape need to change, or even if we want it to change? We have had some varying forms of competition, and it makes us consider do we transform our o ering or adapt it to the market. We've taken an adaptation approach, and it has worked well for us so far. What's core to our business is creating a dream by selling tickets, conducting draws, delivering results and paying prizes. ose are the levels we need to innovate and streamline as much as possible and not transform for the sake of transformation. n PGRI INTERVIEWS Instant Scratch-o s continued from page 20 “ e acceleration in sales has been crazy – we’re already in the top 10 in per capita sales in the United States,” he said. “And there have been many factors. We know that many Massachusetts residents moved to their second homes in ski country and at the lakes during the COVID lockdown and we got a tailwind from them. And there was not much else for people to do – no movies, no restaurants, no recreation that involved groups of people. And the casino in Boston was closed. “But the lottery stayed open. We met internally in the early weeks of March and decided that under no circumstances will we shut down. I wanted more inventory then was projected to be needed and asked our vendors to work closely with us on achieving that goal. e result was that at no point did we fall short. When our players started returning to stores, they found full bins of tickets, and it has stayed that way through the year.” Ensuring the stores would always have a full stock of tickets was also on the mind of lottery veteran Mike Purcell. Having previ- ously worked for the lotteries in Virginia and Florida, Mike has vast experience in creating and selling the scratch ticket product. Now leading the sales e orts in Kentucky, Mike’s past experience and his knowledge of the players in the Bluegrass State helped keep tickets stocked and selling. “Like the NH Lottery, we pushed inventory and our ticket levels never fell short,” he said. “When the pandemic started, we had a four-week supply on hand for retailers, but our vendors kept us supplied and we never fell short of what our retailers needed. With an automated ticket ordering and delivery system, we saw very little interruption in delivery to retailers. at was a key for our sales. “So much of the entertainment and recreation industry closed in Kentucky – horseracing, so important to our culture, stopped. No casinos, no theaters, people couldn’t go out to eat. But our c-stores were busy. Because people weren’t travelling, they didn’t need as much gas. But they did have more discretionary income, and some of that went to lottery. at trend continues today.” Across the country in New Mexico, CEO David Barden applied mathemat- ics to help push sales. e NM Lottery has payo restrictions which require the lottery to return 30% of revenue to the state every month, a daunting require- ment for any lottery. With sales of jackpot games lagging, David had unclaimed prize money that he could use to seed his scratch product o ering. at resulted in an increase in payout across all denomina- tions. e result? “Surprise, surprise – we’re up 24 percent this year over last year,” he said. “We’ve also worked closely with our vendors on prize structures. e chances of winning are about the same, but we’ve loaded the games with prizes between $500 and $1,000. is has created a buzz among players, and we’ve heard that people love the new games even though the top prizes are not at the levels you see in larger states. Winning experiences keep the players coming back.” In our nation’s capital, Beth had a unique problem – empty streets, empty stores, empty commuter trains. With workers being told to stay home, the daytime population in Washington, D.C., dropped an astounding 90%, as commuters from Maryland, Virginia and other neighbor- ing states stopped travelling to D.C. Beth didn’t have to worry about inventory – there simply weren’t enough people to buy their products. “Our biggest retailer shut down because there were no commuters travelling into the city,” she said. “Our neighborhood retailers continued to sell our products and we had no problem providing them with tickets, so District residents had 100% access to lottery products. Our sales didn’t com- pletely shut down. But we were certainly impacted by stay-at-home orders and the lack of daily workers.” While lotteries were scrambling to equip workers with laptops so they could ef- fectively work from home and safely supply retailers with tickets, commercial partners were facing their own concerns. How do they keep the printing presses running e ciently yet safely? What would happen if COVID shut down a manufacturing location? Will COVID restrictions interfere with the shipping of the product? Lottery commercial partners faced multi- prong challenges – take care of their employees’ health needs, make sure their lottery customers are properly supported, Continued on page 41