We were at the Public Gaming Research Institute’s annual Smart-Tech conference in New York City last week. The formal presentations and round table discussions focused on the cautious steps that are going on in the USA to legalize lottery jackpot ticket sales over the internet. From there, the expectations are that other types of legally-sanctioned money gaming over the internet, and the US state lotteries are looking to “own” at least some of this space in each of their jurisdictions.
Many parts of Europe and Canada have already legalized the purchase of lotto jackpot tickets using the internet. A substantial number of jurisdictions in Europe and Canada also already allow their government-sanctioned traditional lottery firms to provide other money gaming experiences, that can include all or some of the following: sports betting, keno, bingo, poker, virtual scratch tickets, simulated slots, and other more unique internet-based games.
There is a general view that government-legislated monopoly lotteries are best suited to oversee safe and fair internet gaming, especially compared to the various types of overseas betting, poker and gaming sites that are typically illegal in the countries where their online customers currently live and play.
In the USA, the Federal Department of Justice only recently ruled in December 2011 that state jurisdictions can run gaming-for-money operations over the internet to serve customers within their own state. Many Lotteries, most notably Illinois, New York and Washington DC, have been waiting for this day. Illinois will be first out of the gate with ticket sales of Lotto Games (presumably both PowerBall and Mega Millions) over the internet in the next few days.
In Canada, three of the five lottery corporations, ALC, Lotto Quebec and BCLC, are already selling not only lottery tickets online to players within their jurisdictions, but also offering suites of other gambling games such as sports betting, casino games, poker and bingo.
One of the key issues that arise from the ongoing and upcoming mobile and internet sales of lotto tickets is the concerns of the retailers who continue to be the dominant vendors of lotto game tickets. The Lottery Corporations know that they need to continue to support and grow the traditional “bricks and mortar” retail sales.
There is the full expectation in North America, based on the European experience, that internet lotto game ticket sales does not cannibalize the retailer based sales. However, ensuring retailers remain fully supported with marketing training, education and collateral, and ensuring that they remain comfortable with the advent of internet sales was pointed out as an important issue for the state and provincial lotteries in the US and Canada.
From Carmanah Signs’ perspective, we are examine how our wireless LCD signage and our wirelessly-updated LED Jackpot signage fit into and help state lotteries add value to this ever-developing, “multi-channel” lottery customer experience. Our many state lottery customers will be looking to “tie together” this developing multi-channel world of traditional retail, internet and mobile sales.
Signage will likely be part of that tie-in, enhancing cross-selling between the retailers and the internet. We will work to help Lotteries serve their player customers with appropriate retail level signage that connects the lottery customers’ online and mobile world with their lottery retailer’s products and services.
Wednesday,
February
8th,
2012
Due to recent intra-state changes within the US lottery industry, each US state lottery corporation is no longer bound to supporting just one of the national Lotto games, Mega Millions or Powerball. Now that each state can offer both Mega Millions and Powerball, there is an opportunity to increase their contributions to Good Causes within the communities in their jurisdictions.
Carmanah Signs has played a role in helping lottery corporations in many US states introduce and promote the second national lotto jackpot game by providing attractive LED illuminated jackpot signs that instantaneously update the jackpot values for each game they promote. These wirelessly-updated jackpot signs are frequently put in the retailer window and are a bright, highly visible call to action to lapsed or occasional lotto players.
Carmanah’s sign designs allow a lottery the utmost in flexibility by having jackpot sign configurations that include single, double and triple formats with the value added feature of being able to able to add-on any one of those formats at a future date. When a customer wants to add an additional jackpot to an existing Carmanah jackpot sign that is already in the field, the end result is a seamless integration of the new and existing sign into one integrated sign.
A major US lottery customer has recently deployed a second modular single jackpot sign to ‘mate’ with the current single jackpot sign in the retail field. The modular connecting hardware is designed for both form and function so that the end result is an esthetically pleasing and completely functional jackpot sign.
While they originally only had PowerBall, the lottery ultimately has been able to promote it and the newly launched Mega Millions game effectively in the retail setting, all the while being able to continue the original look and feel of an original double jackpot sign. Carmanah Signs greatly appreciates the opportunity to help our Lottery customers promote and grow their sales by providing them highly efficient LED illuminated signage.
We’ve made print again! In the most recent copy of LaFleur’s Magazine (March /April 2012), is an article describing Texas Lottery’s recent purchase and deployment of Carmanah Signs LED illuminated wirelessly updateable jackpot signs to its lottery retailer network. The article describes how important jackpot communication is and why the lottery chose Carmanah Signs as a provider for the signage (attention grabbing appearance, and wirelessly updateable jackpot value capability) as well as the progress of the rollout. The eventual goal for coverage is to deploy at 65% of state lottery retailers.
