Illinois Lottery
Richard Fairbanks, VP of Retail, Allwyn North America
This year, we renovated the Illinois Lottery’s kiosks and presence at O’Hare International Airport, which is managed by the non-profit organization United Cerebral Palsy Seguin of Greater Chicago. We also installed digital monitors in 10% of the Lottery’s retail estate to support the Fast Play portfolio at retail. These monitors ranged from 32 to 50 inches in size and were placed in areas that increased the Lottery’s presence within retail while building awareness of our Fast Play portfolio.
In FY26, we are focused on expanding the Illinois Lottery retail network into social/on-premises locations. We aim to recruit 800 neighborhood bars to join the Lottery’s retail network. These bars will fall under a newly established license that focuses on the sale of draw games only to enable a smaller footprint. Within the neighborhood bar space, we will also be introducing a new self-service terminal, “GameStation,” into 500 of these newly established lottery accounts. Our strategy involves engaging current and future lottery players in non-traditional retail settings by providing alternative entertainment options in the bar setting.
We are also placing HALO merchandisers in 100 independent retailers statewide.
Arizona Lottery
Tonya Beenders, Chief Sales Officer
For FY25, we have run two activation & sales growth contests for Arizona retailers and Arizona Lottery sales team members in an effort to combat record sales increases for FY24. Retailers and sales team members love being able to award prizes on their routes and competing against their peers. New game activation rates have continued to climb every month since launching our first contest with the holiday games back in October. Since then, our new game activation rates have continued to increase, and we have had record activations greater than 80% for the last two months. For FY26, we plan to conduct at least one contest per quarter to keep up momentum and engagement with retailers and sales staff. They love being able to have contests and prizes to award on their routes.
We have begun rolling out Schafer Digital Menu Boards at Circle K stores. Over the past year, we have rolled out more than 230 Schafer Digital Menu Boards at our top-performing Circle K stores in Arizona. For the final 100 boards that we just finished installing, our sales team rolled up their sleeves and blitzed almost 100 boards in less than two weeks, which is a remarkable feat in and of itself. The first group of stores with the digital menu boards are performing 25% greater than Circle K stores without digital menu boards. In addition to seeing a spike in sales, overall engagement has improved between the lottery and Circle K, and we plan to roll even more DMBs out in FY26.
Florida Lottery
Justin Rock, Deputy Secretary, Product, Research and Sales
Last year was tough, as year-over-year Scratch-Off sales hit a wall and slid backward, coming off multiple years of anomalous growth. This year, our Scratch-Off sales growth is back in the black, and we’re very proud to have been able to right the ship so quickly.
This is the first full year of our Sales Rep Reward Plan, where our reps have an opportunity to earn up to $5,000 per year in extra money by increasing Scratch-Off sales and achieving other established business goals. Because of the initiative, territory sales growth is up, two-day new game activation rates are up, retailer recruitment is up, and retailer float rates are down. A performance-based incentive is the ultimate ROI maximizer.
Driving Scratch-Off sales is priority number one. We’ll evaluate our Sales Rep Reward Plan and look at opportunities for reps to unlock reward dollars with additional business goals.
Ohio Lottery
Richard Perk, Deputy Director of Sales
In the past year, the Ohio Lottery has seen continued growth of the retailer network, including the addition of new major retail chains that have expanded into Ohio such as WAWA, QuikTrip, and RaceTrac.
We continue to see improvement in our scratch game distribution. We have increased the number of self-service units dispensing scratch-off games. The Lottery expanded the number of DreamTouch Smart (low-profile) units beyond Walmart and added more SCiQ and Select 4 units in the field. Players are becoming more aware and familiar with our self-service in part due to media support for self-service.
The Lottery’s Retailer Incentive Program continues to grow, with sales for FY25 up by 2% over FY23. Sales through the first 41 weeks of FY25 are up 2.5%.
Maryland Lottery
James Young, Director of Sales
We launched a new marketing campaign centered around our top 10% of retailers who operate Expanded Cashing Authority Program (XCAP) locations, where customers can redeem winning tickets valued up to $5,000. The campaign included a newly designed XCAP logo that was used for signage, door clings, flags and also a lighted sign that retailers can hang in their window.
This upcoming year, we’re looking closely at current vending machine assignments to determine if some locations that don’t currently have self-service machines might be better positioned to utilize them than those that do. We have more than 2,000 self-service vending units deployed, and it’s important to make sure that they are placed with the right retailers. We remind retailers that they need to make sure it’s placed in a visible location in the store and also that the machine inventory is properly managed. If the store’s inventory isn’t kept at optimal levels, we’ll remove the vending machine and place it with another retailer.
Presently, we offer debit card payments through our vending machines, but we’re launching a pilot program for debit card readers to be available at the counter for retailers that don’t have vending machines. We also have a digital menu board pilot underway in a mixture of both independent and corporate locations.
Kentucky Lottery
Mary Harville, President and CEO
The Kentucky Lottery collaborated with our gaming system provider, IGT, to upgrade the platform supporting the iLottery channel. Importantly to our retail channel, the new platform, together with substantial retail equipment upgrades coming this next fiscal year, will allow us to implement IGT’s Connected Play features. This will serve to further connect the iLottery and retail channels, providing a seamless experience for players, including options for players to use funds stored in their digital lottery wallet to make purchases at retail and to add funds from winning retail tickets into their digital lottery wallets.
The new platform sets the stage for the rollout of the complete system conversion to IGT’s Aurora solution, including updated terminals and new digital menu boards, a limited number of new vending machines, and more cashless options. Connected Play is to be launched with the conversion in February 2026.
In January, we began a test of Scientific Games’ OrderCast predictive ordering system with a “test” and “control” group of independent retailers.
North Carolina Education Lottery
Terri Rose, Chief Brand Officer & Terri Avery, Chief Sales Officer
We are making investments in lottery retailers to support sales in stores. After successful pilot programs, we plan to roll out a comprehensive retail digital signage program at lottery stores and begin installation of the SCiQ Scratch-Off Management and Merchandising System. The SCiQ system manages, dispenses, merchandises, and tracks scratch-off games at the unit level. It provides visibility and real-time data. Retailers implementing SCiQ have reported sales increases from 15% to 40% following the first year.
We also did a pilot for digital menu boards and learned what type of stores/locations show the most sales lift with the new technology. The performance varied, but we saw retailers experiencing a sales lift from 2% to 8%. In May, we moved forward and signed an agreement with Cineplex Digital Media to provide a digital signage network solution for 1,500 of our retailers in North Carolina. That is a major investment in our retail partners that should help us raise more money for the good cause we serve.
Texas Lottery
Will Russ, Products Manager, Texas Lottery
Over the past year, the Texas Lottery has continued its focus on the expansion of in-lane sales opportunities and the Mega Millions® game change.
As reported last year, the Texas Lottery coordinated with H-E-B® Food Stores to implement a single-store pilot of ticket-by-ticket scratch ticket activation through the retailer’s POS with or without the use of a traditional lottery sales terminal in March 2024. After overcoming initial obstacles, this initiative expanded to all H-E-B stores’ business and fuel centers in September 2024.
The Texas Lottery continues its collaboration with two scratch ticket manufacturers, Scientific Games and Pollard Banknote Limited, to place in-lane automated scratch ticket dispensing units at retail.
Since its implementation in 2023, the Texas Lottery has continued to work with Scientific Games and Pollard Banknote Limited to place automated scratch ticket dispensers (SCiQ® and easyVEND™, respectively) at retail. The dispensers meet industry and Texas Lottery standards for transaction processing and reporting. These attributes and an emphasis on the dispensers’ physical security requirements reduce retailer risk due to theft. As of December 2024, 715 retailers are utilizing one of the solutions.
Additionally, in coordination with NASPL and our scratch ticket manufacturing vendors, the Texas Lottery is developing a new inventory barcode in Code 128 format for all its scratch tickets. This inventory barcode allows scratch ticket games to be scanned by retailer point-of-sale systems, and information on the Code 128 barcode (including game, pack, and ticket number) to be transmitted from those retailer systems to the Texas Lottery gaming system. This information supports the use of ticket-by-ticket activation for in-lane scratch ticket sales. Development of this barcode is in the testing phase, and implementation is being actively pursued.
With its limited ad budget, Texas Lottery had to find innovative methods to promote the new Mega Millions game. To do so, we ran the following promotions:
- 4/6/25 – 4/19/25: Immediately after the change, players could get one free $1 Lotto Texas® (Texas’ biggest in-state jackpot game) and one free $1 Texas Two Step® Quick Pick (Texas’ smaller in-state jackpot game) with the purchase of $10 or more of Mega Millions on one ticket.
- 4/20/25 – 5/3/25: To engage and educate clerks and retailers about the game change, clerks could receive a Texas Lottery screwdriver set for every 10 Mega Millions tickets they sold.
- 5/1/25 – 5/31/25: For May, we are running a digital coupon on our app where players can get $20 of Mega Millions Quick Picks for $15.
For FY26, Texas Lottery is working with its operator, IGT, and InComm so Dollar General can process validations with the ultimate goal of the retailer selling scratch ticket games. The chain did sell the Mega Millions and Powerball QUICKTICKET products before they were discontinued, so they are not completely new to lottery products, but validations and ultimately selling scratch products present different and more substantial challenges that all groups are currently working through.