PANELISTS
– Bishop Woosley, Director, Arkansas Lottery
– Drew Svitko, Executive Director, Pennsylvania Lottery
– Gary Grief, Executive Director, Texas Lottery
– Tom Delacenserie, President & CEO, Kentucky Lottery Corp.
– Moderator: Byron La Fleur, Associate Publisher, La Fleur’s Magazine
In the Retail Trends Panel, the focus turned to what problems lotteries and their vendors still need to solve for big retailers, such as Walmart.
“The lottery needs to be more agile to work with the companies like Walmart,” emphasized Bishop Woosley, Director, Arkansas Lottery. “I tell my staff, when you reach an impasse you need to lead them to where you want them to go.”
“Walmart is a big part of the Kentucky Lottery’s retail transformation in 2019,” asserted Tom Delacenserie, President & CEO, Kentucky Lottery Corp. “We have to tell the big retailers what the lottery can do to attract players. We were able to show Kroger research on methods for increasing their sales at Kroger fuel centers with just a menu board.”
“Pennsylvania is working with Walmart. Working with big box retailers means getting away from the one size fits model, our way or the highway does not work,” stressed Drew Svitko, Executive Director, Pennsylvania Lottery. “The biggest thing the lottery did to expand retail was the introduction of iLottery. We are working to integrate our online and offline products. That is very successful. iLottery builds relationships online that drive sales at retail.”
“With big box, there is good and bad,” said Grief. “The good is the expansion of the network. Working with these big national companies exposes the inconsistencies we have across jurisdictions in areas such as accounting and licensing. We are going to get accustomed to the revenue. At some point, the big box companies are going to turn around demand a unified system for license. I think we can come to some uniformity on working across state lines.”