Players face frustration and confusion when their interactions with lottery don’t align with the level of convenience, consistency, and choice they enjoy elsewhere as consumers. They might find, for example, that a lottery game they played at a local convenience store has different rules, odds, and prizes when they play online, despite having the same title and branding.
When lotteries can remove these kinds of discrepancies and roadblocks, they begin to maximize what IGT calls “playability.”
Playability means providing consistent and seamless play across channels. For draw-based games, it means offering players the same game, the same experience, the same payout and prize pool across sales channels, supporting the experience players expect. Maximizing playability includes enabling consumers to use a greater variety of payment options across all retail devices and to apply promotions in any sales channel, whether they buy the game on their mobile or at retail.
Player-Centric by Design
Designed from the player’s perspective, IGT’s OMNIA™ solution brings together IGT’s high-performing and reliable retail and digital platforms, which have a modular, open architecture. As well as enabling seamless player engagement across channels, OMNIA™ gives lotteries the power and the tools to capture previously anonymous retail-player transactions. This includes purchases of physical scratch tickets, which are associated with the player’s profile through OMNIA’s new basket functionality in the retailer terminal or self-service unit.
Lotteries can harness the cross-channel player data to customize offers—similar to the recommendation engines that power popular media-streaming services.
And, in markets that have not yet bridged the retail and digital channels, OMNIA™ can enable what IGT calls Connected Play—allowing players to begin their journey in one channel and complete it in another, if desired.
When players lightly register through a simple process, IGT’s Connected Play solution digitalizes the in-store player journey. And because OMNIA™ delivers data on player actions, it offers lotteries the advantage of new insights via advanced analytics and AI that can be used to strengthen player relationships and increase engagement.
Raising the Game
OMNIA™’s native integration of the retail and digital channels is central to playability, as it enables the same draw game at the core, regardless of channel.
This is an industry first. In a typical non-integrated environment, a lottery’s supplier partner will build a game such as Keno for retail and a completely different version of the game for digital. The games might have the same odds, but a player will find that the numbers that won at retail are different than those that won online.
By contrast, for every quick draw or Fast Play game in market where IGT powers the iLottery and retail solution, every game can be offered as the same game.
IGT’s hit draw game Cash Pop™ is an example of a popular title that supports a consistent experience. “Running these games across retail and digital channels allows the lottery to upgrade game mechanics, such as prize table modifications and draw-day changes, faster and more consistently,” said Sarah Walker, IGT Senior Director Draw-Based Game Portfolio Optimization. “If we make a game change or run a promotion, it can be done simultaneously because it is made available via the platforms.”
To realize the benefits of a multichannel strategy, lotteries can also leverage eInstant games and themes by having scratch tickets printed to launch at similar times. This allows lotteries to capitalize on the synergies of branding, promotions, and marketing. Lotteries can also offer linked games that feature a pooled, progressive jackpot across multiple similarly themed games.
OMNIA™ supports lotteries by enabling greater Playability, Visibility, Versatility, and Reliability. Contact your IGT representative to determine your path to OMNIA™.