Hoosier Lottery
Jason Mueller, Sr. Manager – Public Relations, Sponsorships, and Event Marketing, Hoosier Lottery
What events (fairs, festivals, concerts) will you sponsor/engage with this year? If applicable, what physical presence will you have at the event?
Hoosier Lottery Sponsorships in 2024:
- Fairs – Indiana State Fair (our largest activation includes on-site sales, giveaways, free stage sponsorship for 3 weeks of concerts, which includes speaking opportunities), Indiana Black Expo (on-site sales), and the Christmas Gift and Hobby Show (on-site sales)
- Festivals – El Dia De La Familia Fest (stage sponsorship, on-site sales), Three Rivers Festival (stage sponsorship), Marshall County Blueberry Festival (fireworks sponsorship, on-site giveaways), Downtown Indy/Circle of Lights (on-site giveaway, stage/interview presence), Fort Wayne Get Green Fest (on-site sales, on-site giveaway), and Indy St. Patrick’s Day (emcee event, parade participation, on-site sales, on-site giveaway)
- Concerts (season-long-branding) – Ruoff Music Center (on-site sales at select events), Everwise Amphitheater (on-site sales at select events), The Mill Amphitheater (Hoosier Lottery Concert Series, on-site sales, or giveaways at select events), Flight Levelz Entertainment (on-site giveaways at select events)
- Sports (season-long branding and in-game promotions with each partner) – Indianapolis Colts (on-site sales), South Bend Cubs, Indianapolis Indians (on-site sales at select events), Gary Southshore RailCats, Lafayette Aviators, Evansville Otters, Fort Wayne TinCaps, Indiana Pacers, Indiana Fever, Evansville Thunderbolts, Fort Wayne Komets (on-site sales at select events), Indy Fuel (on-site sales at select events), Indiana Sports Corp, Speedrome (on-site sales at select events), Salem Speedway (on-site sales at select events)
In the past few years, have you made any changes to your event strategy that were either a success or a failure? What did you learn?
Our Sponsorship Strategy provides a multi-year roadmap to guide our decision-making, ensuring we align with partners that will help us reach our target audiences. We have been extremely focused on growing our sponsorships statewide and expanding beyond sports to include live music, festivals, and fairs.
We have shifted into a marketing mix of traditional and digital activations. Understanding our staff cannot be on-site with each partner consistently, we have intentionally built compelling enter-to-win promotions to create always-on digital engagement with our biggest partners to complement everyday branding visibility. This has been a successful shift, which has also added members to our free myLOTTERY player program.
For on-site sales executions, we have added debit machines. This has created an opportunity to navigate cashless environments and/or provide payment options for players while also expediting the speed of customer lines.
If you have a physical presence at an event, what types of activations/engagement opportunities do you employ and why?
- Do you incorporate a prize wheel? Have you tried any other form of game?
Yes, our most prominent purchase-required promotion involves a prize wheel with the opportunity to win tickets and branded merchandise. These efforts are used for statewide sponsorship and retail events.
- Do you sell tickets?
Yes, we operate as a full-service Hoosier Lottery retailer at many sponsorship activations. Not all sponsor partnerships cater to ticket-selling activations, so we keep an open mind on the best way to reach audiences at specific events. Other options to engage attendees include ticket giveaways, register-to-win giveaways, and in-game promotions.
- Do you use a selfie booth?
This is not a tactic we currently utilize; however, we have focused on building engagement opportunities within our activation spaces. For example, our Indiana State Fair footprint includes a nightly Happy Hour, which provides cash prizes to more than 100 winners during the fair. During last year’s fair, we also brought in a muralist to paint live, which players took photos alongside during the painting process. With our largest partners, we have built social media and other prizing sweepstakes opportunities to engage players in the chance to win special VIP experiential prizes.
- Anything else?
We have other promotional big game activities we utilize at select partner locations, including Drop Zone (Plinko-like), prize boards, Whirl Win®, Prize Shuffle, and Jackpot Launch.
Do you have certain KPIs you measure success with for events?
KPIs we measure include ticket sales, Scratch-off and coupon giveaways, and the number of events we conduct. Extension KPIs come into play as we build and execute enter-to-win promotions. We measure the number of entries, new myLOTTERY members that have entered the program, and the reach garnered through our sponsorship’s communication channels.