33 PUBLIC GAMING INTERNATIONAL • JULY/AUGUST 2025 to play a major role too — recognizing patterns of behavior across both retail and digital, and helping us serve the right games and messages to the right players at the right moments. As Shannon mentioned, these same capabilities are transforming our ability to promote responsible play — creating a more personalized, supportive, and sustainable player experience. If we were designing a system from scratch today, we probably wouldn't even distinguish between a CGS, an IT platform, and an iLottery platform. We’d build a single open-architecture framework — modular, flexible, and ready to evolve with every new wave of technology. Frankly, many of the things we’re working on right now weren’t even imaginable five years ago. And that's what makes this moment so exciting. G. Corbin: Amy, we know that every lottery is at a different point on the journey when it comes to building digital capabilities — whether that's CRM, KYC, loyalty programs, mobile apps, or selling games online. How do you guide your clients through those stages? Is it difficult for lotteries to take that leap and invest in digital? A. Warner: I would say it should be less of a leap and more of an evolution. Lotteries have been doing second-chance promotions for decades, and that’s often where the digital journey naturally begins. Secondchance promotions can evolve into loyalty programs, player clubs, and other digital engagement features. Then, once we’ve established a solid foundation, we start integrating more sophisticated tools like KYC and CRM — which have incredible headroom for growth and value creation. As you progress, we unlock more ways to personalize the player experience, deepen engagement, and drive incremental sales with our CRM solutions. It stops feeling like a risky "big leap into the unknown" for lotteries and becomes a series of smart, measured steps toward a fully integrated digital platform. And eventually, when the time is right to move into full online game sales, it feels like a natural extension of everything we’ve already built — not a massive, risky jump, but the next logical step in an ongoing journey. G. Corbin: That leads perfectly into our next question: how do we truly connect with players and take them from casual loyalty participants to deeply engaged lottery players? I recently had the pleasure of meeting someone I would describe as the ideal lottery player. She told me that she enjoys our entire product mix from our Scratchers to Cash 3 and Cash 4 to our online Diggi Games. In that moment I thought, this is the model lottery player. She engages with both instant and draw games, and she’s active at both retail and online. Rob, how do we create more players like that? Not just moving players from loyalty to CRM, but truly connecting them across both retail and digital channels? R. Wesley: The first thing I’d say is that it’s important to distinguish between a CRM program and a CRM system. A basic CRM program — often built around secondchance promotions and loyalty clubs — tends to treat all players as if they want the same thing, as if they’re having the same experience. And honestly, that’s a perfectly fine place to start. But real growth happens when you move beyond that. When you dive into the data and start to truly understand individual players — that's when you shift from a general loyalty program to actually owning a one-to-one relationship with your players. An effective CRM system enables Marketing teams to leverage those insights: What games does this player like? What time of day do they usually play? How often do they respond to messaging? What types of offers or experiences seem to resonate with them? Instead of marketing to everyone the same way — or even to broad segments — you start designing experiences that are more narrowly defined so that they feel personal and relevant player by player. And that personalization is where real engagement happens. The final, critical piece is giving players choices. Whether they want to engage at retail, online, or both, or receive more or fewer messages and promotions — we must meet them where they are and make sure that every interaction is a great experience. Respecting a player’s choice, and delivering an excellent player experience across every channel, is what ultimately keeps them coming back. S. DeHaven: Another important piece of the puzzle is understanding that player preferences aren't fixed — they evolve over time. A player might fit neatly into one segment when they first register and begin their iLottery journey, but those preferences will likely change over time. We have to make sure we have the right tools in place — tools that let us monitor and assess player behavior, identify trends as they emerge, and pivot our strategies accordingly. It’s been said that our goal is to connect with the right player, at the right time, with the right message, the right games, and the right promotions. The one thing we can count on is that at least some of those preferences will change over time. These shifts are natural — and it's our job to recognize them and evolve the player experience to meet them wherever they are in their lifecycle. At the end of the day, it’s not about the product. It’s about the player — understanding where they are, what they want, and how we can deliver an experience that feels seamless, relevant, and personal at every stage of their journey. G. Corbin: Shannon’s comments cause me to think about how much we depend on our vendor partners. There’s so much involved in launching and managing iLottery — it’s a massive undertaking. Stephanie, from your experience, what can a state lottery operator do to build the most collaborative and productive relationships with vendor partners? And how should a lottery decide which tasks to outsource versus handling them in-house? S. Weyant: When we launched iLottery, we were starting from scratch. We knew very little about it, so we leaned heavily on our vendor partners to help guide many of those early decisions. We've had countless conversations — including with some of the folks on this panel — about the best ways to structure, launch, and manage iLottery. And the truth is, there’s no one-size-fits-all model. Some lotteries integrate digital directly into their existing organization to drive collaboration across departments. Others create a separate digital division — giving it more independence and freedom to innovate outside the constraints of legacy systems and mindsets. Some start with a separate
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy NTg4MTM=