Wade LaRoche, Director of Advertising and Public Relations
The South Dakota Lottery will launch its Hidden Gems scratch tickets this spring. These are custom scratch tickets that celebrate some of South Dakota’s lesser-known attractions. These scenes include the Hugh Glass Statue in Lemmon, S.D., the World’s Largest Pheasant in Huron, S.D., and Devil’s Gulch in Garretson, S.D. This is our first series of custom instant tickets in a while, and we believe that these will appeal to South Dakotans and help celebrate these unique hidden gems throughout the state.
This scratch ticket will also feature a special “road trip” themed pair of second-chance drawings for our players. Each will offer grand prizes including trips to seasonal destinations in South Dakota, while secondary prizes will consist of road trip essentials like gas cards. We believe these tickets will appeal to our players and help celebrate some of South Dakota’s hidden gems.
While we use a lot of traditional elements such as TV, radio, and billboards to market our scratch tickets, we also saw strong performances in FY 2025 through the use of Reels and YouTube Shorts. We are excited to explore more opportunities to utilize these platforms, especially with our holiday tickets, our Hidden Gems series, and the Jurassic Park instant ticket.
In addition, we have increased our footprint at select retail locations through new Halo display units. These visually appealing cases have given us another resource to help showcase our instant ticket portfolios at retail locations. The Halos have performed well in the market at these retail locations, and we look forward to their continued success.