It’s “win o’clock” in the Granite State where the New Hampshire Lottery launched Keno in December. The lottery is also hoping Keno will generate “sales o’clock.”
INTRALOT, Inc., the lottery’s systems vendor, activated the new game before the holidays. “We are up and running,” declared New Hampshire Lottery Marketing Director Maura McCann. “There are between 40 to 50 locations statewide. The first day of sales was just about $40,000.”
Keno’s daily sales run anywhere between $20,000 to $30,000 so far. “Keno may be purchased 24/7 with drawings from 11 a.m. to 11 p.m., every five minutes,” said McCann. “We’ve got self-service machines in those locations and within a couple of months, those who want our vending machines (we call them WinStations) will also be getting those to sell all our products.”
The legislation, signed into law by Gov. Chris Sununu in July, has residents of a city and town voting to approve the sale of the game. There are 13 cities and 200 towns. “Just like the lottery back in 1964—there was a special election on March 10, 1964 and 13 of the state’s 211 communities said no. The first ticket went on sale two days later, March 12 to then Governor John King. Interesting more than five decades later, as is the New Hampshire way, residents vote again. The net profit is earmarked to fund full-day kindergarten,” said McCann.
“During the fall, we were busy crisscrossing the state doing Keno presentations for 12 of our 13 city councils,” explained McCann. “One city was not holding elections this fall. The city of Franklin voted early and voted approval. The city council in Portsmouth voted against putting it on the ballot. Ten cities put it on their ballot for November and seven out of the 10 said yes. However, Somersworth’s vote—there was a one vote difference in favor of Keno. Recount showed tied! And when a vote is tied, the measure does not pass. That left us with six cities to get Keno up and running by our on-sale date of December 15, 2017.”
McCann added that the towns, “if they put it on the town warrant, will have residents voting on the sale of Keno the 2nd Tuesday in March or March 13, 2018. So now we are turning our focus to those areas!”
The lottery’s marketing campaign includes pithy POS to get the word out on Keno’s playability. “Come here often? I do. Every 5 minutes.”