Public Gaming International Gaming July/August 2021

22 PUBLIC GAMING INTERNATIONAL • JULY/AUGUST 2021 T he numbers on online shopping are eye-popping. According to Digital Commerce 360, a leading retail research organization, online sales were up 32 percent in 2020 over the prior year for a total of $792 billion. For the first quarter of 2021, sales were up 30 percent over Q1 2020, nearly triple the increase of all quarters in 2020. For the lottery industry, where at-retail sales have broken records in nearly in every jurisdiction, the increase in the use of the digital sales channels hit a bit differently. While only around a dozen states are selling products online, most lotteries have a digital presence which only grew in importance over the past year-plus. With all eyes on how digital sales will progress, this panel – titled “Portfolio Management in the Digital World” and consisting of iLottery veterans – offered a look at how lotteries can balance their online and retail products. Kevin Hall, Executive Director of the Virginia Lottery which just celebrated its one-year anniver- sary of digital sales, served as moderator for the panel which featured: Richard Bateson, Chief Commercial Officer at JUMBO Interactive J.B. Landroche, Senior Vice President Corporate Affairs, Georgia Lottery Derek Levesque, Senior Manager, U.S. Digital Business Development, IGT Stephanie Weyant, Deputy Executive Director, Marketing & Products, Pennsylvania Lottery. Stephanie said that one result of the increased focus on online shopping is that lotteries will now be held to the same high standards as businesses such as Walmart, Target and Amazon. “We see that the online players skew slightly younger than traditional lottery players and many of them shop online,” she said. “So they expect the same experience as Amazon and Netflix, with more game content and frequent updates to the site. They want more winning experiences. To them, it’s not so much a single purchase but a session, a longer-duration experience. And just like online shoppers, our digital players expect our platforms to be mobile friendly, intuitive, and frictionless. So overall I would say that the online player expects a different experience than our traditional player. The following article is based on a Roundtable Discussion conducted at PGRI Digital Lottery eConference on June 17. PORTFOLIO MANAGEMENT IN THE DIGITAL WORLD D I S C U S S I O N R O U N D T A B L E