49 PUBLIC GAMING INTERNATIONAL • JULY/AUGUST 2024 Nurturing an industry-wide culture of collaboration and support — continued from page 12 hope that it continues after I am no longer president. An important missing link right now is vendor partner involvement, which I think is critical. But at least we started it so the new directors know they can reach out to any of us and can connect with a mentor as they like. My second goal revolves around engagement. What makes this industry so special is the personal relationships, which are an invaluable resource for advice and guidance. We do not compete with each other and so there is no barrier to sharing and helping each other. Too, while we all seem to be keenly aware of our differences, there are far more commonalities to the way our businesses operate. So there is hardly a single issue or problem that has not been faced by someone in our industry. NASPL itself has tremendous resources - facts, data, and information – that can be helpful. Or one state may identify with the gaming and pop culture of another state and decide to share ideas and even creative when it comes to advertising and promotions. Think about the incredible redundancies of 45-plus lotteries all separately paying to reinvent the wheel instead of working together and building a brain-trust that would help to defray costs, increase efficiencies, and otherwise optimize outcomes. Of course, we already do share and work together a lot. NASPL, MUSL and others do a great job of facilitating interaction. I just think there is a lot of opportunity for more engagement amongst NASPL directors, vendor partners, and folks like yourselves at PGRI that are friends of the lottery industry. These things are being discussed and I hope we continue to build out more formal structures that facilitate collaboration within our industry. We heard about some of the fabulous results that can be achieved by collaboration at your last PGRI conference. David Barden and a team of MUSL directors have completely reshaped the landscape of co-branding and promotional initiatives. NASCAR and New Year’s Rockin’ Eve First Powerball Millionaire with Ryan Seacrest being a couple examples. The MUSL directors emphasized, though, how important it is for them to approach uberbrands like the NFL with the full support and engagement of all lotteries. It makes all the difference to our ability to maximize the value of our brand, and therefore the terms and conditions they can negotiate with potential brand partners. Hundreds of millions of dollars are spent by U.S. on advertising every year. Surely there are more ways that we can collaborate and find ways to create templates that can be shared by multiple lotteries. And maybe save tens of millions of dollars? And how about RFP’s and RFI’s? NASPL has fabulous resources to streamline and modernize the compilation of information that goes into these documents. We just need further engagement and buy-in to these initiatives, some of which are in process already. An example of advice you were given early on? C. Polzin: It was from a colleague on the vendor partner side, not a lottery director. His comment when I first started was for me to listen and ask questions. Ask why they are doing things the way they are, even if I do not feel like I am in a position to weigh in on it. Ask staff to just explain why they think the way they think. That was a great way to learn the business. I took his advice and after a year, I asked him for a new directive for year two. He told me to continue to ask questions, but now make sure I resist the temptation to tell them what to do. Let the team do what they do every day and stay out of their way. I truly believe in and trust my team. And they have produced a 63% increase in sales in the short time I've been here. And now you are so much more knowledgeable and effective as an industry leader than you were seven years ago. It is a shame the industry is not able to capitalize more on the experience gained by lottery directors who are allowed to serve a longer tenure. C. Polzin: I think that’s the toughest part of this industry. There are so many talented, solid, smart, hard-working directors, who are asked to leave after an election ushers in a change of political parties, just when they were getting up to speed. It is probably the one obstacle to this industry achieving its full potential. It is also difficult on the staff who is trying to execute on longerterm strategic plans. It is hard to maintain momentum and continuity with so many changes of leadership. And they don’t know if the incoming director will be a micro-manager who does not know what they don’t know and wants to dive in and change everything. Fortunately, most of us have good intentions and are smart enough to not interfere and mess things up! It would still be better if industry leaders were given longer terms to accomplish more ambitious goals and contribute more to optimizing multi-state games and strategies. What does the future hold for the Wisconsin Lottery? C. Polzin: Wisconsin operates within even stricter limits than most lotteries. No iLottery or games like Keno. So we look at distribution as being the place we can innovate to drive sales. Wisconsin has a large tavern industry so we are working hard to penetrate that sector. We did just implement a mobile app with our vendor partner IGT to a phenomenal reception. Players love it! I have a great relationship with our legislature. I was in politics all my life and so I have a lot of dear friends that are both legislators and legislative staff that I'm very comfortable just to pick up the phone and say, hey, what do you think about this idea for the lottery. They can give me guidance on which ideas should be run up the flagpole. For most things, the issue is already decided. State statutes, for instance, prohibit iLottery. But we have succeeded at getting some laws amended to allow us more flexibility to improve results and funding for our beneficiary which is property tax relief. Like almost all lotteries, our business would make excellent use of more resources in general. Responsible gaming, research, sales, marketing and advertising would all benefit with the end result being more funds generated for Wisconsin taxpayers. Lotteries are the most responsible stewards of resources. I don’t think there are any billion-dollar consumer products companies that contain operating expenses to 5% or 6% of revenues like most U.S. lotteries do. Ours is 5.1%. Credit to the support we get from the legislature and our stakeholders along with the incredible Wisconsin Lottery staff who knows their job is to produce the results with the resources we have. I am so proud of them for their dedication, talent, ingenuity, and hard work. These people are the heart and soul of the industry and make my job the most rewarding job in the world. n
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