PGRI Smart-Tech 2026 landed in Fort Lauderdale on 11-12 March. Two days of sessions covering portfolio strategy, competitive threats, retail innovation, and the uncomfortable question of whether lotteries are moving fast enough.
Here are 155 tips and tactics from the conference floor.
The mood was set early. Reginald Dixon of the Florida Lottery opened with a blunt assessment: the industry is changing, competition is at an untold level, and in Florida the folks they’re competing against have serious money. The challenge? Deliver change with integrity.
Brian Rockey, Director, Nebraska Lottery; President, NASPL
Keynote: ‘This Isn’t Your Father’s Oldsmobile’
1. Flip the script on how the world sees lottery. The lottery shows up in pop culture as a punchline. Someone wins, loses it all, life returns to normal. Jerry and Marge Go Large is the rare exception. Rockey’s challenge: stop being the punchline. Be the hero of the story.
2. Tell your story through the people you serve. Players, retailers, regulators, beneficiaries. The lottery story lands better when it’s told in their words, not yours.
3. Audiences hear you through filters. So get your ‘why’ straight. Research suggests people are most interested in hearing what happens to the funds lotteries raise. Lead with impact, not process.
4. Be in the room when policy makers gather. Understand their priorities, their language, and how to frame lottery’s contribution in terms they care about.
5. Sports betting operators are sophisticated and well-funded. Learn from them. They’ve built participation models. Stadiums are billion-dollar experiences. Consumers are buying access, not just watching.
6. But lotteries hold cards that competitors don’t. Decades-old customer relationships. Websites with real visibility. Responsible gaming credentials. And money raised for good causes. These aren’t legacy liabilities. They’re advantages.
7. Use partnerships to borrow relevance. Association with major brands unlocks audiences. And the endorsement works both ways; they’re telling consumers your brand is like one of theirs.
8. The more you monetize, the stronger you become. Relevance isn’t static. Increasing commercial value keeps lotteries trusted and competitive. NASPL is actively seeking new partnership models.
Michelle Carney, Vice President, Global Lottery Marketing, Brightstar Lottery
Decoding Digital Life: Tapping into the Mind of the NextGen Player
Carney’s session drew on Foresight Factory research to map four consumer trends and what they mean for lottery. Practical, forward-looking, and grounded in data.
9. Biohacking is mainstream. Lottery should pay attention. Consumers are upgrading their personal operating systems. Face ID and biometrics are now commonplace. As players become comfortable with technology that reads and responds to them, AI can deliver real-time responsible play guardrails. Not surveillance. Support.
10. Phones are pocket studios now. Screens are expanding and becoming intelligent. Multimodal AI understands what users see, say, and do, delivering real-time feedback. Creation, guidance, and insight are becoming ambient. For lotteries, this means players will expect to choose their own graphics in games. True content on demand.
11. Anticipation is the new default. Consumers expect brands to act proactively, not reactively. For lotteries, predictive intelligence surfaces the right game at the right moment, tailored to each player. Personalized cause messaging reinforces local impact. And seamless retailer guidance turns anticipation into action.
12. Protect the tactile ritual. 69% of lottery players enjoy using their hands. The scratch, the tear, the reveal. iLottery is an extension, not a replacement. The slide from Foresight Factory put it well: protect and elevate the tactile ritual of scratch play. It remains a core emotional differentiator. Layer intelligent digital enhancements on top, but don’t bulldoze what makes it physical.
13. Personalized storytelling beats AI slop. In an era of AI-generated noise, authenticity is becoming a competitive advantage. 66% of global weekly lottery players agree they like to buy from brands that reflect their personal values. Brands that feel human, not automated, build deeper loyalty. Lead with authentic, value-driven storytelling. Embed lottery within players’ real-world passions, from local events to everyday rituals.
14. Weave lottery into new contexts. Partnering with relevant brands lets lotteries show up where players already are. The goal isn’t to interrupt. It’s to belong.
Charlie Scannella & Joey Lewis, Scientific Games
What It Means to Lead a Lottery in 2026 and Beyond — A Partner Perspective
15. Lottery perceptions are shaped by the dopamine economy. Players are being conditioned by the instant feedback loops that other brands offer. Every swipe, notification, and reward from a competitor recalibrates what “engaging” means.
16. Competition isn’t side-by-side. It’s friction-by-friction. Especially for low-dollar, high-frequency purchases, small amounts of friction matter. Consumers don’t compare lotteries to lotteries. They compare lottery retailer friction to gaming app friction.
17. Scannella’s framework: Find the places where you’re leaking money. Operational inefficiency shows up as player churn, retailer dropout, or margin compression. Look at every touchpoint. Where’s the friction? How much money are you leaving on the table?
18. Supply chain resilience is a product differentiator now. Gaming technology is only as good as its uptime. Retailers won’t stock games they can’t depend on.
Ian Hannaford, US Games & Portfolio Lead, Intralot / Bally’s
Playbook for Success: Designing Your Winning Portfolio
Hannaford brought Byron Sharp’s How Brands Grow into the lottery conversation. It landed well.
19. Category entry points are everything. Mental availability drives purchase. The challenge for lotteries is to grow the number of occasions when your product comes to mind. Not just jackpot night. Every occasion.
20. Physical availability closes the loop. Mental availability gets you considered. Physical availability gets you bought. Or as Hannaford quoted: be within an arm’s reach of desire. Convenience, ubiquity in retail, and increasingly, digital.
21. Think about lottery the way beer thinks about beer. The beer aisle breaks down by style, flavor, price tier, and occasion. Lottery should do the same. Scratch, fast play, big jackpots, keno (social). Each game type performs a role. Each one matters. But unlike the beer aisle, lotteries have smaller retail space. So getting the right games in the right place at the right moment is critical.
22. Use data to manage the portfolio, not gut feel. Intralot’s iPOP is a performance optimization process that evaluates pricing, prizes, prize structure, and portfolio gaps. A data-driven process to identify what’s missing, what’s mispriced, and what could play harder.
23. AI is coming for portfolio management. Bally’s Intralot is now running AI across the portfolio to evaluate performance using sales data, game parameters, and external drivers like weather trends. Pattern matching to evaluate a portfolio, then recommendations for new and existing games. Over 1 million players, delivering content relevant to each individual. Real-time personalization at scale.
24. Speed is often confused with insight. Hannaford closed with Johan Cruyff: “When I start running earlier than the others, I appear faster.” With the FIFA World Cup heading to the US, the timing felt right. The point: it’s not about moving fastest. It’s about reading the game before everyone else.
Jeff Lipps, Director, Lottery Management Services, Pollard Banknote
A Blueprint for Partnership
25. Reduce friction. Increase sales. It’s that simple. Pollard increased scratcher sales by 4.8% in Arizona. The method wasn’t revolutionary. They identified points of friction and removed them. Three pillars: expertise, engagement, future focus.
26. Listen to retailers. Then act on what they tell you. Pollard oversees customer service, retail operations, and sales, integrated with the lottery team. Feedback from retailers is the signal. Everything else is noise.
27. Align incentives between inside and outside sales teams. If the incentives pull in different directions, so will the effort. Getting those two teams rowing together changed the dynamic.
28. Best practice is contagious. Use proof to convert skeptics. Chain retailers were hesitant to take the $15 price point on fast play. But when smaller retailers in Arizona proved it worked, the bigger chains followed. Social proof works.
29. Invest in retail training. Retailers are your frontline. If they understand your games and can explain them, customers buy more. Simple training has enormous upside.
30. Friction lives everywhere. Keep finding it and removing it. Supply chain hiccups, payment processing delays, unclear game instructions, confusing SKU architecture. Every point of friction costs you sales.
Panel 1: Portfolio Management 2.0
Expanding choice without creating confusion, attracting new audiences while retaining core players, and allocating marketing resources effectively.
Moderator: Tom Seaver, Director, Colorado Lottery. Panelists: Gretchen Corbin (President & CEO, Georgia Lottery); Justin Rock (Deputy Secretary, Product, Research & Sales, Florida Lottery); Bret Toyne (Executive Director, MUSL); Nat Worley (VP Marketing & Sales Development, Brightstar Lottery)
The panel opened on a high. Millionaire for Life had just launched, and the room was enjoying the warm glow. Then the conversation got real.
31. There are $100 instant games now. The acceleration in new launches is deliberate. Jackpots have been good, but every lottery faces the same challenge: making up budget deficits when jackpots aren’t rolling. The panel was frank. When jackpots aren’t doing the heavy lifting, you need another game that will continue to engage. Consumers want new and exciting, every minute.
32. Growth is decelerating in some core categories. Find the excitement elsewhere. The opportunity is games that can be played, and won, frequently. Not a replacement for the tentpoles. A complement.
33. Competition is fiercer on more fronts than ever. This wasn’t theoretical. The panelists were specific about being challenged from multiple directions simultaneously. The response? Look for new ways to engage players, but be purposeful about which bets you place.
34. Slow down to speed up. Florida is purposefully slowing down, honing in on the scratch-off portfolio by revenue source. Looking at how to reinforce and reignite the core before chasing expansion beyond it. In the past, they spent time creating peripheral products that were a drop in the bucket. Now they pick the opportunities. Grow the big revenue sources.
35. Governments care about one thing: how much are you sending back? Lotteries have to think about profit. What is the greatest opportunity to return the best profit to the jurisdiction? What does the tech calendar look like? Are we getting the best bang for our buck?
36. Start intentionally. In Jersey, Brightstar is responsible for delivering strategy, including building unpredictability through the year. This gives a focus on making choices. Not doing everything. Doing the right things.
37. Protect the jackpot games. Don’t shrink the pie to grow a slice. The panel was clear: the goal is to grow the pie. Not to make the jackpot smaller. Jackpot games need protecting even as you innovate around them.
38. Know when a game has died. And admit it. Gretchen Corbin: sometimes the right time for a new game is when an existing one is already on the way out, and you may not have admitted it yet. Suppliers are an incredibly important part of product development. Involve them early.
39. Allocate ad spend to the games most likely to make profit. TV is still king for reaching 55+. Digital gets the younger audience but metrics are messier. The panel consensus: follow the money. Where are players coming from? How much is each channel costing you? Adjust.
40. Don’t optimize for participants. Optimize for contribution margin. Worley: It’s not about raw player numbers. It’s about profit per player. Two hundred people spending $100 each beats ten thousand people spending $2 each every time.
41. Scratch is a different animal than draw. Respect that. Draw games are built around moments. Powerball is Tuesday and Friday. Scratch is moment-independent. The retail strategy, the marketing strategy, the product strategy all differ. Don’t force one model onto both.
42. New players are coming. But from where? The panel acknowledged they don’t fully understand player acquisition. Who’s new? Are they lapsed? Are they from a competitor? Understanding this drives strategy.
43. The secondary audience is a blind spot. College kids. Night workers. People who don’t visit retailers at typical times. Digital is the obvious solution, but it’s not fully solved. There’s upside here.
44. Mentimeter told a story. Powerball and Mega Millions are just 13% of national lottery sales. The room guessed much higher. The implication: the tentpoles are smaller than people think. The opportunity is elsewhere.
45. Speed to market varies wildly. Georgia: 6-8 weeks to launch a new game. Others take 6-8 months. The faster lotteries iterate, the more they learn, the better they become.
46. The dashboard is your friend. If you can’t measure it, you’re guessing. Dashboards that track game-by-game performance, channel performance, player cohorts, and ROI by marketing spend are table stakes now.
47. This might be the year retailers push back. Chain retail is scrutinizing margin. If you’re not delivering value, they’ll reduce your footprint. Know your margin story. Defend it.
Lorne Weil, Executive Chairman, Inspired Entertainment
Disruptor or Disrupted 2.0: Carving Out a Role for Lottery in a Competitive Marketplace
This was the session that made the room sit up. Weil brought data, charts, and a clear warning.
48. iGaming has gone through the roof. iLottery has stagnated. In Michigan and Pennsylvania, scratch ticket GGR has been broadly flat since 2015. iLottery has grown modestly. iGaming, meanwhile, has exploded from near zero in 2019 to over $3 billion by 2023. The chart tells the story.
49. But read the chart carefully. Weil was honest about the scales. In Michigan, lottery is measured in billions, iGaming in millions. The visual can make iGaming look dominant, but the absolute numbers tell a different story. Pennsylvania lottery has shown a steady decline. Grey market machines are part of that picture too.
50. Where one digital channel is absent, the other fills the gap. Virginia has the highest eInstant GGR per capita at $46, and no iGaming. New Jersey has iGaming GGR per capita of $305, and no iLottery. The pattern is clear.
51. 34% of iGaming revenue comes from players who don’t bet on sports. Based on 2025 Lotto Research data. That’s $3.2 billion in GGR from non-sports bettors across four states. These are a distinct audience. Lottery should be asking: who are they, and why aren’t they playing with us?
52. The industry keeps talking about sports betting as the threat. The bigger number is iGaming. Across New Jersey, Michigan, and Pennsylvania: $9.4 billion in iGaming GGR versus $2.7 billion in sports betting.
53. Lottery sales are up. Market share is down. In 1992, lottery held 70% of the legal gaming market. Today it’s 26%. Sales have grown from $30 billion to $120 billion in the same period. Revenue is rising, but the pie is growing faster.
54. The 2025 Lotto Research survey paints a complicated picture. People think iGaming is more fun than lottery. They think it offers a higher chance of winning. 83% of respondents trust the lottery, compared to 40% for FanDuel and 38% for DraftKings. Among 25-34 year olds, 55% prefer to gamble online. Average monthly sports betting spend is almost 4x higher than monthly spend on scratch, Powerball, or Mega Millions.
55. Prediction markets are the next disruptor. Kalshi generated $238 billion in bets in 2025. Up to 90% of the money is on sports. The rake averages 1-2%.
56. 81% of households are aware of prediction markets. Weil’s 2026 research surveyed 2,000 lottery and gaming players. 23% have already used them. Among 25-34 year olds, brand recognition is highest, and the appetite is strongest.
57. The real opportunity is the underserved market. Weil called it the $3.2 billion market: people who want gaming but aren’t sports bettors. They’re not seeking prediction markets. They’re gaming players looking for the right product.
58. Lottery has three strategic options. Defend scratch and draw as core. Compete in iLottery by building more engaging digital experiences. Or compete in the broader gaming category by offering games that aren’t traditional lottery. The panel agreed: lottery’s advantage is in the third. Build games people want that lotteries can uniquely deliver.
59. But first, lotteries need to understand their non-player. Who isn’t playing? Why? Weil’s research showed the gap. But understanding the specific motivations behind non-play is critical.
60. The data is available. The question is whether lotteries will act on it. Weil closed with a challenge. You have the information. What you do with it will determine who disrupts whom.
Panel 2: Redefining Lottery
Reimagining portfolio strategy for the digital age, evolving go-to-market, and deepening player connection in a competitive landscape.
Moderator: Khalid Jones, Executive Director, Virginia Lottery. Panelists: Charles McIntyre (SVP North America, Inspired Entertainment); Sarah Taylor (President & CEO, British Lotteries / Allwyn); Monika McMahon (Senior Director of Digital, Allwyn North America); Nathalie Tremblay (Vice President, Commercial, Interprovincial Lottery Corporation)
The conversation picked up where Weil left off, but with a different angle: not just defending or competing, but reimagining what lottery is.
61. Powerball and Mega Millions are just 13% of sales. Most of the room guessed wrong. The implication is that portfolio strategy has to be way more sophisticated than “defend the tentpoles.” You need a system, not just tentpoles.
62. Draw vs. scratch. Fast play vs. instant. eInstant vs. physical. These are no longer categories. They’re channels. McIntyre pushed the panel: think of these as distribution methods, not product definitions. A single game concept can flow across multiple channels. The player doesn’t care about your category. They care about the experience.
63. Portfolio strategy in 2026 is about matching the right game, to the right player, through the right channel, at the right moment. Data makes this possible. The complexity is the system. Build the system, not just the products.
64. Retailer relationships have fundamentally changed. Chain retailers are consolidating, moving digital, and scrutinizing margin more than ever. Independents are struggling. The retail network isn’t what it was. Lotteries have to adapt.
65. Digital is table stakes. The question is: digital what? iLottery? Subscription? Social lottery? Sweepstakes? The panel was candid: most lotteries haven’t cracked digital. And the playbook from other sectors doesn’t copy-paste cleanly to lottery regulation.
66. First-party data is gold. And most lotteries have no system to capture it. McIntyre: if you’re not capturing email, phone, device ID, and play behavior, you’re flying blind. Build the infrastructure now.
67. Personalization without creepiness is the opportunity. Taylor: “We’re moving away from broadcast to narrowcast.” Know your player well enough to make relevant offers. Not so well that they feel surveilled. The line is real and it matters.
68. The next generation of lottery isn’t about selling more tickets. It’s about building player lifetime value. McIntyre: frequency, variety, and relevant moments. If a player buys scratch once a month, marketing to them happens on day 25, with an offer tailored to their history. Retention becomes the metric, not just new acquisition.
69. Responsible play isn’t friction. It’s a feature. The panel pushed back on the idea that responsible play tools slow down sales. When implemented thoughtfully, they build trust. Trust builds loyalty. Loyalty sustains revenue.
70. Marketing still matters. But the channels have fragmented. TV reaches 55+. Digital reaches 25-45. Retail marketing reaches the retailer-loyal. You need all three. But the efficiency of each varies by geography and player type.
71. The killer question: what’s your five-year vision? Tremblay asked the room. Are you defending? Are you competing in gaming? Are you building a media brand? Your answer determines your strategy. Many lotteries don’t have one. That’s a liability.
72. Speed matters. But so does precision. Sarah Taylor: you can move fast and break things. Or you can move thoughtfully and build things that last. Lottery is conservative for good reason. But caution can become paralysis. Find the balance.
73. The biggest risk is irrelevance, not failure. McIntyre closed with this. A failed game costs money. But irrelevance to your players costs everything. Keep them engaged. Keep them playing. Keep them feeling like lottery is part of their life.
Panel 3: The Art of Data-Science
How lotteries combine analytics with human judgment to deepen player connection, reduce attrition, and drive sales.
Moderator: Stephen Durrell, Executive Director, Kansas Lottery. Panelists: Shannon DeHaven (SVP Digital Engagement, Pollard Banknote); Khalid Jones (Executive Director, Virginia Lottery); Monika McMahon (Senior Director of Digital, Allwyn North America); Rob Wesley (VP North American Customer Development, Aristocrat Interactive)
The panel opened with a William Goldman quote: “Nobody knows anything. Not one person in the entire motion picture field knows for a certainty what’s going to work.” Replace motion pictures with lottery, and the point stands. But data is changing that.
74. What players tell you in focus groups isn’t what they do in reality. Are they lying to you, or to themselves? Either way, the gap between stated preference and actual behavior is real. Digital data closes it, because customers can’t lie to you about what they click on.
75. Ten years ago, segmentation was super simple. Now, machine learning answers practical questions. Which players are about to churn? How can we address that responsibly? What games should we recommend? What device? The shift from descriptive analytics to predictive action has been rapid.
76. The future isn’t about the data model. It’s about culture change. Organizations will become data native. But the blocker isn’t technology; it’s willingness. Data can make lotteries less risk-averse by empowering teams to control their own decisions and measure their own impact.
77. Shift from product-focused to customer-focused. Data makes it possible. Lotteries have traditionally built around products. The opportunity is to build around players instead.
78. On the digital side, you have an idea, run a test, and get results you can act on. Speed of learning is the advantage. The volume and velocity of digital data let you iterate in ways retail can’t match.
79. What’s the first thing you look at each morning? Khalid Jones: whether the jackpot has been hit, because it determines whether marketing and promotions need to adapt. Shannon DeHaven: deposits, because the data will show me the jackpot impact anyway. And I’ll look for anomalies first. Different lenses, same discipline.
80. Know what to obsess over. There’s so much data that figuring out what’s important, and what’s not, is key. Jones compared it to basketball analytics: rebounds, turnovers, the individual factors that make a team successful. Same obsessiveness applies to lottery.
81. The danger of data is analyzing only the players you have. You’re missing the people who aren’t playing. Look outside your existing data. Understand non-players, not just active ones.
82. Don’t hand over dashboards. Hand over context. Vendors should be saying: “This is what the data shows, here’s our hypothesis, and if we do X, we think Y will happen.” And be humble enough to accept you won’t always be right. Also, each lottery is different. What works in one jurisdiction won’t copy-paste into another.
83. CRM is a differentiator, but only if you use the evolving tools. Illinois took a core group of players and sent them zero marketing for six months. Compared with the rest: 25% difference in GGR spend. Direct communication works. But CRM only differentiates if you push beyond email, into push notifications, website messaging, and machine-learning-driven timing.
84. Use jackpots to build your CRM, not just your revenue. Virginia is experimenting with retailer incentives during high jackpots. That’s when you’re getting new players. The incentive isn’t to sell more tickets; it’s to get those new players into the CRM, so they become retained customers, not one-off purchasers.
85. Budget for innovation. Always. At what point do you disregard the data? When you’re trying to envision a future that doesn’t exist. Set aside a testing budget. And in the words of Frozen: let it go.
Tina Wolf, VP Business Development North America iLottery, Aristocrat Interactive
From Impossible to Expected: The Consumer Shift Driving Lottery Modernization
86. Convenience is personal. What matters to me isn’t what matters to you. 42% say they didn’t buy a ticket because they didn’t have time to get to a retailer. That’s not a product problem. It’s an access problem.
87. Promotions work. 27% say they play online because they receive relevant promotions. 71% say a promotion would get them to buy. Simple, targeted, timely.
88. Players want practical tools, not gimmicks. 30% want instant notifications of wins. 1 in 4 want digital payments and cash-out options. 12% want spend limits they can set themselves. Utility, not novelty.
89. Design the bridges between retail and iLottery. First-time scanning a retail ticket? Give points for watching a video about online offers. Retail players have preferred behaviors, time of day, preferred stores. That’s not going away. Offer tools to support them online, not replace them.
90. Rethink account management. People want to register quickly, with personalized login, using face recognition. Preferred payment options matter. When a player withdraws, you could offer vouchers instead of cash, which they spend in retail. Retailers like that too.
91. Players want variety from session to session. For years the first question was: what new games do you have? Draw, raffle, eDraw, virtual sports, iKeno, Fast Draw. Preferences differ per player, and they shift. Observe, learn, adjust, measure, repeat.
Giovanna D’Esposito, Peggy Daniel & David Li, FDJ United
Evolving Responsibly: Balancing Innovation, Responsibility, and Relevance in a Changing Marketplace
92. FDJ has built an AI scratchcard. People queued for the prototype. The card shows the buyer’s face on the scratch card, in an environment of their choosing. That’s personalization taken to a physical product. It bridges the AI-driven digital experience with the tactile ritual players love.
Panel 6: The Jackpot Hits. Now What?
Moderator: Sharon Strong, Executive Director, Arkansas Lottery. Panelists: Harjinder Shergill Chima (Director, California Lottery); Anna Domoto (Director of Communications, MUSL); Lester Elder (Executive Director, Missouri Lottery); Dolly Garfield (CEO, South Carolina Lottery); Cindy Polzin (Director, Wisconsin Lottery); Sergio Rey (Deputy Executive Director, Texas Lottery)
On Christmas Eve last year, a player in Arkansas won the second-largest jackpot in history. The panel opened with Sharon Strong’s understated summary: “What happened after that was a wild ride.” The room laughed, then leaned in. This session was the most operationally useful of the conference.
93. Have a jackpot manual. And make sure it has a trigger point. California’s kicks in over $800 million. It determines who goes to the site that night, when to brief retailers, what the communication sequence looks like. If you’re building your playbook during the event, you’re already behind.
94. Start posting to social media immediately. Many media outlets are now watching social first. Your channels are your fastest route to setting the narrative before someone else does.
95. The comms team will be working through the night. Plan for that. Book flights if you need people at the retail site the next day. The excitement has a short half-life. You want to be there while it’s still news.
96. Video capture of the winner isn’t just nice to have. It’s evidence. In the days and weeks after a big win, people come forward with false claims. Footage of the real winner protects the lottery and the winner both.
97. Align with the retailer before the media arrive. Whether it’s a chain or an independent, get your messaging agreed. Retailers who go off-script create problems. Those who are well-briefed become assets.
98. Anonymity rules change everything – and they vary by state. Missouri holds the location for 72 hours to give retailers time to prepare. It also takes heat out of the media frenzy. Know your state’s rules, communicate them clearly internally, and build your timeline around them.
99. Always include the beneficiary in your press release. Every time. “This win contributed $X to [good cause].” Review the California press releases – widely considered best in class for this.
100. During a big jackpot run, keep releasing the data. Odds of winning. Odds of rolling over. Good cause updates. California does this consistently. It fills the space with facts rather than speculation, and reminds the public what lottery is for.
101. Turn the cause into the story where the winner won’t. Wisconsin’s jackpot money goes to property tax relief. Not glamorous. So the team runs with cheese. “How much Wisconsin cheese could you buy with this win?” Find the angle that makes people read.
102. Think about physical security early. There may be people watching the building. Clear the space before the winner arrives. Plan their arrival and departure. Don’t let the excitement override the basics.
103. Watch your language on the releases. “There is a winning ticket” is not the same as “we have a winner.” Don’t declare a winner until the claim has been fully audited. Vet everything. Getting this wrong is costly in every direction.
104. A false claim can be a felony. Say so. Including this in your communications discourages frivolous claims and protects the process.
105. Wire transfers have limits. Payment may take multiple days. Banks can cap wire transfers at around $100 million. If you’re paying out $600 million, plan accordingly. Arkansas winners leave with a cheque, which is surreal but true. Know your payment options before you’re in the room with a winner.
106. MUSL is the resource most lotteries underuse. Other states have been through this. They’ve made the expensive mistakes so you don’t have to. Call them.
107. Organisational readiness matters because big wins are rare. Your team may be inexperienced. Build a basic timeline. Assign clear ownership. Keep the circle small. Checklist each stage. Rehearse it before the event, not during.
108. Reinforce anonymity with retailers explicitly. In Missouri, breach of anonymity is a Class A misdemeanour. Make sure your retailers know that. And know what it means.
109. Give the media a story that isn’t the winner. One winner made small donations to local charities. The media interviewed the charities. The winner stayed private. The lottery got good coverage. Everyone won.
110. The cheque presentation to the retailer is a marketing moment. “Millionaire made here.” Signs. Director visit for a win over $1 billion. Bonus programme announcement. These things extend the story beyond the win itself.
111. iLottery removes the uncertainty around who won. With digital, you know. That changes the whole claims process and reduces the window for false claims and chaos.
Gertjan Dekkers, Chief Revenue Officer, Abacus Lottery Solutions
Is Self-Checkout Adoption at Retail a Threat or an Opportunity?
112. Self-checkout has trebled in five years. And it’s not slowing down. 96% of shoppers have used it. 73% prefer it. These aren’t fringe numbers. This is where retail is going.
113. Right now, lottery can’t be bought or redeemed at self-checkout. That’s a problem. If 73% of shoppers prefer self-checkout and lottery isn’t available there, you’re invisible to a growing share of every store’s traffic.
114. The numbers are already moving. Instant scratch game sales fell $0.3bn from 2024 to 2025. Self-checkout adoption is one factor. Address it before the line gets steeper.
115. Enabling lottery at self-checkout doesn’t slow down the queue. Abacus has built instantaneous delivery with AI-powered age verification. The concern that lottery creates friction at self-checkout is solvable. The friction of not being there is worse.
116. Self-serve encourages re-purchasing. 35% of people who redeem a ticket at a self-checkout unit buy another one. Redemption is a sales trigger. Make sure your technology captures it.
Angela Wong, Vice President, Global Lottery Solutions, GLI
Staying Ahead of Emerging Threats: Future-Proofing Your Cybersecurity Strategy
117. Lotteries have three-year marketing plans. Most don’t have the same for security. That asymmetry is a vulnerability. Security strategy needs the same long-term thinking as commercial strategy.
118. Cyber criminals are agile. Your infrastructure may not be. Older systems aren’t designed to defend against modern attack methods. Regular updates aren’t optional maintenance. They’re governance.
119. Consistent security assessments surface problems before attackers do. Build these into the calendar, not just the response plan.
120. Your security team needs to know the lottery business, not just security. An expert who doesn’t understand what lottery systems do, or what the failure modes look like commercially, is limited in what they can protect. Domain knowledge matters.
121. Vendor systems are a vulnerability you inherit. Every third-party system in your stack is a potential entry point. Contractual expectations around security standards – and ongoing monitoring to verify compliance – aren’t optional extras.
122. Have an incident response plan. And test it. The question isn’t whether an incident will occur. It’s whether you’re ready when it does.
Don Silberstein, Senior Vice President, Marketing & Business Development, SCA
Happiness v. RTP: What Research Says About Lottery Players
Silberstein opened with a question: what do the founder of Kalshi, a professional basketball player, and Queen Elizabeth have in common? The answer: they’ve all placed bets on prediction markets. The headline alongside the slide told the rest of the story — FanDuel and DraftKings have both exited the American Gaming Association over a rift on how prediction markets should be regulated. Silberstein’s point: the competitive landscape is shifting faster than most lotteries are tracking.
123. Prediction markets are the next disruptor — and the fault lines are already forming. Kalshi generated $238 billion in bets in 2025, with up to 90% on sports. The sector is in a regulatory battle. Lottery should be watching closely, and forming a view.
124. Buying a lottery ticket makes people happier. Winning a small prize doesn’t add to that happiness. This isn’t conjecture. It’s from peer-reviewed research: The Joy of Lottery Play: Evidence from a Field Experiment, Experimental Economics, 2020 (Plesging et al.). The time between ticket purchase and winner determination is measurably happier than the equivalent period without a ticket. The prize itself is almost incidental.
125. If happiness comes from anticipation, design for the wait – not just the win. Anything that extends the window between purchase and outcome – multi-draw tickets, subscriptions, loyalty mechanics – extends the player’s happiness. This is the academic underpinning of extended play. It’s not a gimmick. It’s the psychology.
126. The distinction between lucky numbers and quick pick maps onto a deeper psychological construct. Internal locus of control: “I am the main determinant of outcomes.” External locus of control: “Forces outside myself determine outcomes.” Players who pick lucky numbers believe their choices influence a random outcome – an illusion of control. Sports bettors, by contrast, skew internal. Understanding which mindset your players bring should shape how you write copy, design products, and frame jackpot narratives. Source: The Effects of Desire for Control in Situations with Chance-Determined Outcomes, Journal of Research in Personality, 1991 (Burger).
127. There are two responses to a changing competitive landscape. Lotteries need to choose one. Silberstein’s closing framework was the clearest of the morning: (1) Do what you do, better – transactional improvement. (2) Change your product and go-to-market strategy to meet new competitive challenges – transformational change. Most lotteries are doing the first. The competitive environment may require the second.
Patrick Watson, President & CEO, Splashdot
I Win! Redefining the Lottery Paradigm Through Ongoing Engagement
128. The single moment isn’t enough anymore. Digitally native players expect ongoing entertainment, interaction, and continuous value beyond a single draw. Lottery’s traditional model – buy, wait, check – is a thin experience compared to what players get everywhere else.
129. Powerball XOs is always on. The promotional element shifts from Super Bowl-scale moments to $500 draws. Every ticket counts. The benefit is immediate. Eligibility is continuous. That’s a fundamentally different relationship with the player.
130. Non-winning tickets are eligible too. This is the key design decision in the Powerball XOs programme. Both winning and non-winning tickets earn points. It separates the engagement loop from the win entirely – every purchase creates value for the player, regardless of outcome.
131. Early-week purchasers can earn more. Bonus points can be structured around date of purchase. Players who buy Monday or Tuesday earn more than those who wait until Friday. A deliberate nudge to smooth purchasing behaviour across the week – and to build habit rather than last-minute transaction.
132. Bonusing for multiple ticket purchases mimics what the best loyalty apps already do. Starbucks doesn’t reward you for one coffee. It rewards you for coming back. Lottery can do the same, and the mechanics are well understood.
133. Loyalty has historically meant points for stuff. That’s not enough. The opportunity is loyalty that adds lottery excitement on top of the loyalty itself. Not a points scheme with a lottery skin. A genuinely engaging programme where the playing is the reward.
134. Lottery is entertainment. Act accordingly. Always be engaging. Not just on big jackpot nights.
Joni Hovi, Senior Vice President, Customers and Marketing, Fennica Gaming
Beyond the Jackpot: Building a Sticky, Sustainable Player Base
The session opened with a Mentimeter poll. The room was asked: What’s the single biggest challenge in your business? “We need more players” came top, closely followed by “active player base is not growing,” then “jackpots are attracting players but they don’t stay – not enough stickiness.” The room knew what the problem was before Hovi said a word.
135. Understand where eInstant sits in the gaming spectrum — and whether you’ve filled the gap. Fennica’s data maps the full range from mega-jackpot lottery through national lotteries, keno, eBingo, physical scratch, eInstant, online slots, to retail slots. As you move right, main prize compresses from 100,000,000x to 100x, RTP rises from 50% to 90–96%, and game duration shrinks from twice-weekly draws to 1–10 seconds. eInstant sits in the middle — bridging lottery players and casual gamers. Have you filled that opportunity gap?
136. eInstant players are lottery players, not casino players. Hovi was direct about this. The eInstant opportunity sits between physical scratch (10,000x main prize, 50–65% RTP) and online slots (1,000x main prize, 90–96% RTP). That’s not casino territory. It’s lottery territory, served digitally. Lotteries that aren’t offering eInstant are leaving their own players to find that experience elsewhere.
137. Segmentation is the foundation. You can’t build stickiness without knowing who you’re trying to retain. Fennica operates across 18 jurisdictions. The data is consistent: you need to understand your players by behaviour, not just demographics, before you can design programmes that retain them.
138. More female than male players – across 18 jurisdictions. This was stated plainly and landed with some surprise. If your marketing skews male, your creative is missing most of your audience.
139. The Scratchers player is not who you might assume. Fennica’s player profile: 78% female, skewing 35–54, playing weekly or randomly. The top reason to play is “to win money to make dreams come true” (58%), followed by entertainment (45%), cheering up the day (25%), and having fun (19%). Customer satisfaction: 95%. If your Scratchers marketing was designed for a 40-year-old man, you’ve misread your customer.
140. Female players dominate eInstant sales too. The majority of eInstant sales by value come from female players. If your product design and creative skews male, you’re optimising for the minority.
141. Game design must match player psychology, not just demographics. Each game category attracts a fundamentally different player with different motivations. The right design for one segment actively repels another. Know your segment before you design your game.
Merrill Fullerton, Account Adviser, Alchemy3
Rewarding the Front Line: The Case for Lotteries to Incentivise Clerks
142. The case for clerk incentives is straightforward. Programmes that reward frontline retail staff deliver a 30% increase in revenue, a 20% increase in lifetime value, and better retention. Sales from existing customers can be 68% more cost-effective than acquiring new customers. The math is simple.
143. The retail workforce is more disengaged than most lotteries realise – and it’s getting worse. Only 45% of retail workers feel in the know about the products they’re selling. Only 28% believe their organisation’s communications are effective. Only 32% feel heard – down from 63% in 2021. 37% of retail managers say lack of training is impacting their day-to-day work. 54% of retail managers report feeling burned out daily. Source: The Deskless Report 2023, Retail Edition (Assembly/Yozu Conspiracy Research). A burnt-out, uninformed clerk is not your brand ambassador.
144. The barriers to clerk incentive programmes are real but solvable. Competing rewards programmes, incentives being diverted to store owners rather than clerks, inability to track individual behaviour, operational burden on stores – all obstacles. All addressable with the right technology.
145. The solution has five components, and low friction is at the centre. Alchemy3’s framework: unique clerk identification, customer input, traceable actions and data, stand-alone solution – and at the centre, low friction. The whole system fails if it’s hard to use. Low friction isn’t a feature. It’s the prerequisite.
146. The Checkout Counter platform creates three simultaneous relationships. For the clerk: a direct connection to the lottery, a product knowledge centre, and a mechanism to receive rewards. For the customer: a way to validate the clerk interaction and potentially receive their own incentives. For the lottery: a direct communication channel to clerks, trackable engagement data, and store-level satisfaction insight. One QR code. Three relationships. No integration burden on the retailer.
147. Rewarding the clerk rewards the lottery. If the person behind the counter understands your games, recommends them, and has a financial incentive to do so, you have a sales force you’re currently not paying for.
Panel 7: Focus on Retailers
Moderator: Gretchen Corbin, President & CEO, Georgia Lottery Corporation. Panelists: Tyson Barr (VP Sales USA, Carmanah Signs); Randy Burnside (Executive Director, DC Lottery); Steven Desautels (Regional VP, Intralot); Jeremy Kyzer (VP Retail Solutions Sales, Scientific Games)
The session opened with a line that deserved to be on the wall: “We are in the business of dreaming.”
148. Start by listening to retailers. There is no one-size-fits-all. Their why is making a profit. Your job is to show them how lottery helps them do that. That conversation starts with understanding their business, not pitching yours.
149. College students want tactile experiences. An informal survey found younger consumers want to get away from their screens. There’s an opportunity to connect a younger generation with the physical retail experience. Lottery, of all things, has that.
150. The myths about who plays lottery are costing you retail conversations. In DC, 57% of lottery players have a college degree. More than 60% have household incomes over $120,000. When retailers understand who their lottery customers actually are, they make different decisions about space and attention.
151. The retailer lunch works. Rewards, prizes, Q&A, and real business done. But the feedback from retailers is telling: “We don’t get the communication from the lottery that we used to.” Show them the analytics. Demonstrate the value of a good point-of-sale position. Don’t assume they already know.
152. There are three underserved shopper types at retail. Lottery is missing all three. The young digital native is on Instagram and YouTube – lottery doesn’t advertise there. The social impact shopper responds to the $36 billion a year given to good causes – lottery rarely takes that story back to customers. The community connection shopper wants to belong to something – lottery isn’t showing up on social platforms. Three gaps. Three opportunities.
153. Every lottery ticket should have a QR code that shows where the money goes. Not a URL to a PDF. A video. A sizzle reel. Players have a phone in their pocket. Give them a reason to use it at the point of purchase.
154. Add a second QR code that shows the next game in the family. If they buy a $1 ticket, show them what the $5 version looks like. This is basic upselling, and most lotteries aren’t doing it.
155. Store screens are a wasted opportunity. Lottery has had front-and-centre counter space for forty years and has changed very little about what it shows there. Static images don’t cut it. You need a visual menu board. Video. “Have you bought your ticket for the $800 million jackpot?” Eventually, if you’re not making that space work, retailers will give it to someone who will.
This post was written on the day. Undoubtedly, it will contain errers. If you spot more than one, or have corrections, please let me know: jdeaville[at]receptional.com
