39 PUBLIC GAMING INTERNATIONAL • JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2025 industry utilize their apps, websites, emails, texts and all forms of electronic contacts and content, to promote consistent responsible play? Is it possible to highlight where Lotteries have funded RG campaigns and help? 2025 may be the first year where key competitors (notably sports betting brands) begin to reign in their Marketing spend a little, mainly due to financial pressures as the undoubted surge of takeovers and acquisitions starts to take hold in that industry. This may be the best time the Lottery industry has to strike back in regaining the #1 position in consumer’s minds. Trust me I’m a researcher n Simon Jaworski, Founder & CEO, Lotto Research simon@lottoresearch.com C: 609-558-1019 COVID. But applying the concept of overstory can deepen our understanding of the epidemiology of ideas, how cultural trends and attitudes are shaped, and how they then manifest in the form of specific behaviors like laying the lottery. Let’s look at sports betting. Then we’ll look at Lottery. The overstory of sports betting would need to include Fantasy Sports which emerged six or seven years before the Supreme Court ruled that states could legalize and regulate sports betting. Even higher in the overstory canopy is the incredible increase in popularity of the NFL between the 1980s and the 2010s and continuing even now. And how about the exponential rate of growth of hours spent on Mobile devices between 2010 and today. Or the opening up of a huge sports media business sector to drive engagement. And how all these factors contributed to the transformation of public attitudes about sports betting to see it not as “gambling” but as just another normal part of being a sports fan. I don’t know if the stakeholders of the businesses that benefited by all these rapid-fire changes were that prescient. They probably did not talk about “overstories”. But whether intentional or not, their actions did align with some powerful overstory drivers of change. So … what’s our lottery overstory? I don’t know. The answers to many of these overstory questions do not always reveal themselves early on. The technology for personal computing was available in 1980 but the tipping point (release of Windows 3.0 and then Windows 95) didn’t happen for ten years. And the subsequent alchemy (photosynthesis if we lived in a forest) that ties together personal computing, the internet and the technological changes that followed, i.e. the overstory, is still being played out. We could, though, observe that land-based retail is undoubtedly a mission-critical part of our overstory. A healthy retail sector is like opening up the canopy to let in the sun and rain that sustains life. Obviously, a lot more can be said on that subject. Regulatory action has profound impact and continues to confound me. I’m not sure of the antidote, but we just seem to be losing the PR battle for public mind-share/ awareness and the interest of legislators who shape regulatory policy. Did you read the “Model Internet Gaming Act” written by NCLGS (National Counsil of Legislators from Gaming States)? The whole thing is a recipe for turning regulatory control over to commercial gambling interests. It’s almost as if it was written by the AGA (American Gaming Association) and Spectrum Gaming, with no input from state lotteries. The very first item in their policy statement even asserts its affiliation with commercial gambling operators and its lack of consideration for state lotteries: “It is in the state’s interest that the implementation of iGaming be accomplished in a manner that compliments (sic), and does not adversely impact upon, the licensed casino and racino facilities that may exist in a particular state. … The state may limit the internet gaming operators to the licensed casino gaming, racino, and sports betting operators in the state.” No mention of the state lottery. In fact, the state lottery is excluded from the sectors that can be licensed! It goes on to say, in a section titled Legislative Findings “The Legislature finds that the operation of internet wagering in conjunction with our brick and-mortar casinos serves to protect, preserve, promote, and enhance the tourism industry of the state as well as the general fiscal well-being of the state and its subdivisions.” Again, why is lottery being excluded? “NCLGS recommends a tax rate between 15 percent and 25 percent to achieve this desired result.” NCLGS has no business pushing this low-tax agenda that serves the interests of commercial operators, not the interests of the public. The final nail in the coffin for state lotteries is for NCLGS to clarify that “This act does not prohibit selling internet lottery games, including, but not limited to, digital representations of lottery games.” In other words, this “Act” invites states to allow commercial companies to create betting games that play like lotteries. Lastly, NCLGS recommends that “The Gaming Regulatory Authority shall have financial and administrative independence in conducting its affairs.” This clause confers sweeping powers independent from legislative and executive branches of state government. Add this to … “The Gaming Regulatory Authority shall be funded by the legalized internet gaming operations which it is charged with regulating, through the receipt of application fees, licensing fees, monetary fines imposed for regulatory infractions, proportional assessments, or other mechanisms for equitable reimbursement of regulatory costs.” In other words, the Gaming Regulatory Authority is to be funded by the very people they are supposed to be regulating. OK, I could rant on in righteous indignation but will stop here. The NCLGS “Model Internet Gaming Act” is a blueprint for turning the industry over to commercial operators and ensuring that state lotteries are neutered, disempowered, and boxed out of the internet gaming and even iLottery space. I am pleased to retract this little rant if someone, anyone, can explain where my conclusions are not on-target. I would welcome the opportunity to retract based on being wrong! An important aspect of our overstory is, in my opinion, that we are now in direct head-to-head competition with other games-of-chance categories, and money games that masquerade as something other than gambling. Lotteries now operate in a competitive consumer-driven freemarket environment; and in competition with well-funded adversaries who promote an agenda that is not consistent with the interests of either the general voting public or the interests of lotteries and the good causes they support. Thankfully, the leadership of state lotteries has always applied more ingenuity, creativity and innovation than our competitors to ensure that lottery players always come out on top! So Bring it on. Paul Jason, Publisher Public Gaming International Magazine Publisher's Note — continued from page 8
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