The Lottery World in Brief (Jan/Feb 2023)

February 14, 2023
12:42 pm

Livin’ Large with Luke Combs

The Virginia Lottery will launch its $5 Livin’ Lucky with Luke Combs scratcher in February. The $5 scratcher features a 68.55% payout. The online instant game will be offered from $0.50 to $30 per play with a 87% payout.

“The omnichannel launch of Livin’ Lucky with Luke Combs will receive robust advertising and marketing support,” said John Miutz, Advertising & Retail Communication Manager, Virginia Lottery. “Advertising will include TV, Radio, digital billboards, digital advertising on a number of platforms, point of sale, vending equipment, paid and organic social media, paid social influencers and radio promotions to give away tickets. Players will also see Luke Combs stand-ups at retail locations.”

Massachusetts’ $50 Ticket

The Massachusetts Lottery launched its first-ever $50 ticket, Billion Dollar Extravaganza, on February 7. The game offers over $1 billion in total winnings and features the largest instant win prize ($25 million).

“We announced plans for this ticket in late December and have been actively promoting in on social media and other Lottery-owned channels, while also informing our retail partners,” said Ed Farley, Chief Marketing Officer, Massachusetts Lottery.

“The ticket will be supported by a paid media campaign, including TV and radio spots that are being produced by our in-house creative team. The theme of the campaign is a major motion picture premiere with the ticket being the star attraction,” he added.

The Billion Dollar Extravaganza ticket includes three $25 million prizes, five $2 million prizes and 15 $1 million prizes. With an overall prize payout of 82.0 percent, Billion Dollar Extravaganza will deliver the highest payout percentage of any game ever offered by the Mass Lottery. The odds of winning a prize in the new game are 1 in 4.10.

With a print run of 30.2 million tickets, sales from the new $50 Billion Dollar Extravaganza game are expected to exceed $1.5 billion, giving it the potential to generate over $150 million in net profit.

Billion Dollar Extravaganza presents its players with the best chance to win $500 and $1,000 prizes in Mass Lottery history, and all winning tickets total $100 or more.

The game will feature 10 second chance drawings, allowing players to enter non-winning tickets for opportunities to win cash prizes ranging from $100 to $50,000. In each of the 10 drawings, 15 $50,000 prizes, 10 $1,000 prizes, 75 $500 prizes, and 300 $100 prizes will be awarded.

Print ‘n Play

Virginia Lottery will be revamping its instant-style terminal games, called Print ‘n Play. “In March 2023, we are starting to deploy new Print ‘n Play games each month beginning with $10 Max Cash Multiplier on March 21,” said Strategic Games Manager Scott Kenyon.

$50 Variations

The Texas Lottery will launch two $50 scratchers in the first quarter 2023. In January, the lottery launched $5,000,000 Ultimate, which features a $5 million top prize. On March 6, the lottery begins sales for 500X Loteria Spectacular. Both tickets offer a 78% prize payout.

The Arizona Lottery will roll out a new $50 game, Set For Life, which will be launched in February 2023. “It offers a top prize of $250,000 a year for 20 years. It will have a full ad campaign and promotion supporting it,” said Shelby Alessi, Marketing Manager, Arizona Lottery.

The Idaho Lottery just introduced a $50 game in January. “Max-a-Million has a prize payout of 77.78% and two top prizes of $1,000,000,” said Sherie Moody-St. Clair, Deputy Director, Marketing, Idaho Lottery.

All In The Family

The New Hampshire Lottery is offering a trio of scratchers featuring low top prices for its “sporadically released” FOG. Instead of launching all three tickets at once, the lottery pulsed the three tickets’ launch over a period of six months.

The lottery released its third FOG ticket around the holidays. The first in the series, $50 or $100, is a $10 ticket launched in June 2022. The second FOG ticket, called $100 or $200, is a $20 ticket. It went on sale in September 2022. The newest ticket, $100, $250 or $500, is a $25 ticket launched in November.

“The creative to support the new $25 ticket, personifies the scratch tickets as they talk about the new game arriving in the ticket dispensers. Upon arrival and sale, the new game is able to call out the prizes to be won,” said Kelley-Jaye Cleland, Chief Product & Program Officer, New Hampshire Lottery.

Ticket to Adventure

Washington’s Lottery will launch a Ticket to Adventure” promotion on February 12. The top prize is a 2023 Winnebago. The second chance drawing is tied to Lotto.

“Based on the overall appeal through our Player Panel, this promotion came as one of the top ideas,” said Randy Warick, Assistant Marketing Director, Washington’s Lottery.

Dream Ranger

The Illinois Lottery will continue to support its MUSL and in-state draw games with its Dream Ranger campaign.
“The Dream Ranger’s purpose is to make sure Illinoisans have the very best tool for a daydream. He’s looking for the thing that could make any daydream a reality: An Illinois Lottery Ticket. He’s an incredibly positive guy who loves his job,” said Meghan Powers, Communications Director, Illinois Lottery.

The Dream Ranger appears in TV, OLV and social videos. He is also included in static executions.

Wild Ads

The New Hampshire Lottery created a “wild” bloc lotto campaign for lotto jackpot alerts.

“At the beginning of fiscal 2023, we launched a new Powerball and Mega Millions Jackpot Alert Campaign called ‘That’s Wild!’ spoofing a bit on wildlife here in New Hampshire featuring the local wildlife of bear, deer, eagle, and largemouth bass to promote big jackpots,” said Maura McCann, Director of Marketing, New Hampshire Lottery.

In the creative, the wildlife got the attention of the human in the spot, telling them about the big jackpot. “Wildly (pun intended) successful and entertaining yet we realized—we did not go BIG enough,” explained McCann. “The creative easily supports the jackpots of $300 million to $800 million yet didn’t really support the near or beyond billion jackpots. Talk about WILD – realizing we needed to go bigger! So, we’ve gone back to address the largeness of the jackpots by going ‘more wild’ to support those huge jackpots!”

$30 Crossword

The California Lottery is expanding its popular Crossword lineup. The new $30 (Crossword Xtreme) ticket will offer a significant extended play experience. It launches in March 2023.

“Crossword-themed instants continue to be tremendously popular in California, representing some of our best-selling games. Player research highlighted an opportunity to expand our crossword portfolio, and in 2023, the California Lottery will be adding two new price points for crosswords with our first-ever $1 and $30 price points,” said Whitney Alderson, Assistant Deputy Director of Marketing, California Lottery.

Florida Scratch

The Florida Lottery kicked off 2023 with the GOLD RUSH DOUBLER family of games. It features four price points: $1, $2, $5 and $10. Since the Gold Rush theme has been a staple in the product mix, the lottery positions the launch just in time for its peak selling season.

“February 27 marks the debut of Florida’s first Sparkle® Select ticket (produced by SG), the $50 game, $1,000,000 A YEAR FOR LIFE SPECTACULAR,” said Diane Wieczorek, Senior Product Manager, Florida Lottery. “Also launching this month at the $5 price point is the SG licensed property game THE PRICE IS RIGHT™ with the linked promotion ‘Come on Down Challenge’, in which 20 Florida players will compete in Las Vegas, with players from participating lotteries, for the chance to win up to $50 million!”

Daily Draw Fun

The North Carolina Education Lottery (NCEL) is running a series of promotions in 2023 for its daily draw games. “We wanted to take steps to keep these popular games fresh and fun and reward some of most loyal players who enjoy playing them,” said Randy Spielman, Deputy Executive Director, Product Development & Digital Gaming, NCEL.

In January, Cash 5 players got a new promotion, Cash 5 Bonus Cash. In February, the lottery will begin selling Pick 3 and Pick 4 tickets through its Online Play program. In March, the lottery will create more fun for its Pick 3 and Pick 4 players with an “Instant Cash” promotion. “This promotion demonstrates a broader strategy for our numbers games that includes two major promotions each year aimed at rewarding some of our most loyal players,” said Spielman.