27 PUBLIC GAMING INTERNATIONAL • JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2025 brand loyalty that cannot be achieved with the anonymous retail player who only buys lottery games in stores. With or without the ability to sell products online, lotteries must build a CRM platform that includes players clubs, loyalty programs and promotions that connect players to the full lottery experience. How has game portfolio management evolved in recent years? McHugh: Optimizing the overall game portfolio is critical for growth. That means being strategic and data-driven in selecting game categories, price points, play styles, and high-indexing products. We’ve learned over time that connecting with the largest variety of play styles and preferences is the best way to maximize overall sales. That can sometimes mean fielding lower-indexing games because they appeal to a player profile that might not otherwise play lottery. We can sometimes reduce the number of high-indexing games because they replicate and cannibalize each other. Our analytical tools—the ‘science inside’—are becoming more and more precise at guiding our efforts to fine-tune the portfolio to maximize the depth and breadth of market penetration. They help cast the widest net to connect with new consumer groups, offer new games to keep the experience fresh for casual players, and ensure our lottery customers always have the games that appeal to their core players. What are the most promising opportunities for lotteries to invest in going forward? McHugh: Investing in digital and CRM activities, beginning with player clubs, loyalty programs and promotions that drive the players from retail to digital, is key. We also see continued growth through lotteries leveraging more services with our partnership programs. It is imperative for lotteries to invest in and fully take advantage of their strengths for another reason. Competition continues to intensify with players having immediate access to all varieties of gaming. Our research shows that lottery players are more likely than ever to play in other game categories. Creating and strengthening the digital connection enhances the lottery playing experience and reinforces brand loyalty. It's also essential to modernize lottery retail with technologies like SCiQ. Retailers are modernizing the in-store environment and experience, and they expect lottery to drive advances along with them. Look at how top-performing C-stores are presenting themselves today compared with even five or six years ago, transforming their whole look and feel and service offerings. As we increase our support for retailers, helping them be more efficient and profitable, they will increase their focus and support of the lottery category. It's all about driving the player to the omnichannel experience so they can enjoy lottery in as many ways as possible. Lottery’s network of retailers is a vital competitive advantage. Our industry’s best interest is to invest in retailers’ success with tools that enhance efficiency and lower the cost of selling lottery products. There is still headroom for increasing retail lottery sales by improving how we support our retail partners. Predictive ordering systems that ensure the right mix of products is displayed in stores at the right cadence will drive sales and help retailers manage inventory. For instant game performance, our full-service comprehensive partnerships deliver unparalleled results. Scientific Games Enhanced Partnership lotteries outperform others in every metric. How are data analytics and CRM tools being applied at retail? McHugh: Analytics has always been one of Scientific Games’ core strengths, informing the development of all our products and services. The fundamental pillar of collecting and analyzing data analytics is to convert it into business intelligence that enhances portfolio management and drives player engagement and sales. Whether that be SCiQ, self-service vending machines or clerk-operated terminals, we are very deliberate about designing ways to capture market basket data that lotteries have not been able to obtain. Self-service terminals have great potential to integrate suggestive upsell opportunities, promote new games and additional play, and capture a whole new level of player data at retail. And, of course, we use promotions like second-chance draws to drive players to register online and initiate digital, interactive relationships. That leads to engagement with players clubs and loyalty, yielding tremendous data and insight into player behavior and preferences. Artificial Intelligence is beginning to play a more significant role in sorting and analyzing data and turning that into actionable business intelligence for our lottery customers. What are Scientific Games' highest priority initiatives going into 2025? McHugh: We’re focused on lottery players’ entertainment value. We’re leveraging Scientific Games’ strengths in omnichannel connected products to truly optimize the whole player experience. We’re investing in growth for the industry, our lottery customers and Scientific Games. Our investments include game content, technologies that enable data analytics and services, retail support systems like SCiQ and all things digital. These will continue to drive value for our customers and grow their business. Some highlights include expanding our SG Content Hub to allow seamless integration of third-party game content and ultimately support the most extensive variety of digital game content available to lotteries around the world. We’ve built our ability to effectively manage our customers’ digital game portfolios, consistent with how we manage retail portfolios through our SGEP program. Licensed properties have added tremendous value to retail instant games, and we are expanding that value to digital content. We're innovating terminal-generated games like Fast Play and applying licensed properties to these products as well. It's good to know the multi-billion-dollar lottery industry is now guided by data like other consumer products. McHugh: That's exactly right. Our SG Analytics is the umbrella that spans everything we do and drives the science inside. Scientific Games has historically been perceived as an excellent instant game and lottery systems company. But we have always been so much more than that. Now, we have leveraged our science, technologies, and competencies to create an omnichannel ecosystem capable of serving the player who wants intuitive navigation to migrate across all game categories and all channels. Scientific Games’ enabling technology is integrated to deliver the entire ecosystem for our lottery customers. We look forward to an exciting year of helping the industry thrive in 2025! n Momentum®, PlayCentral®, SCiQ® and WAVE™ are trademarks of Scientific Games, LLC. © 2025 All Rights Reserved.
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