By Byron LaFleur, CEO & Editor
Retail remains the economic engine for most lotteries, even as players migrate to digital channels and new forms of gaming compete for attention. But it is getting harder for lotteries to break through at retail. That reality is showing up in smaller discretionary baskets at convenience stores, increased price sensitivity, and more fragmented entertainment spending, all while retail partners still shoulder the day-to-day work of merchandising, selling, and servicing players.
Inflation-driven pressure is one of the most immediate headwinds. North Carolina Education Lottery Communications Manager Adam Owens described customers as “tighter with their dollar,” noting that a traditional convenience store stop that once included a ticket purchase “may no longer make it past the fill-up at the pump.” When fuel, food, and household essentials rise, lottery spend can become more occasional, and the path to purchase becomes more fragile. That pushes lotteries to pay closer attention to in-store visibility, friction at the counter, and retailer execution, because even small barriers can turn an impulse buy into a pass.
A practical retail response is to make the in-store experience easier, clearer, and more modern for both customers and clerks, while giving lotteries and retailers better tools to manage inventory and performance. Owens summarized the approach simply: “We are investing, investing in technology directly in the stores of our retail partners.” In North Carolina, that includes deploying digital menu boards that display jackpots, draw games, new ticket launches, winner stories, and education-benefit messaging, plus planned eye-tracking work to optimize what customers notice first.
The state is also rolling out the EyeQue platform, which replaces older plexiglass browsing with digital selection and integrates behind-the-counter tracking that can flag products nearing out-of-stock. It is paired with more organized ticket dispensing below the counter. Owens pegged the investment in this technology at “around $15 million,” with an intended footprint of roughly “a thousand locations,” and described further expansion of self-service through roughly “2,500” vending machines.
Execution at this scale also requires broader collaboration and a more disciplined view of the customer experience end to end. Owens described bringing multiple stakeholders to the table with a “doing better together” mindset, including vendors that may compete elsewhere, because retail performance is a shared dependency. He also pointed to growth opportunities in new retail categories (pharmacies, hardware), in-app cross-promotion tied to customer location, and placing products like Keno in social venues where people already gather.
Underpinning all of it is a “player journey” framework that tracks awareness, interest, in-store experience, retention, and advocacy. As Owens warned, “Those first person reviews can be a big sales driver,” and they can cut the other way if the retail experience is not seamless. The goal is not to romanticize the past, it is to “reestablish our strength at retail instead of just watching it slide,” protecting a channel that still directly funds North Carolina’s education beneficiary while keeping retailers profitable and engaged.