Bloc lottos run in Canada, Europe and the United States were examined in the “Global Lotto Bloc Trends” panel. Panelists provided a summary of game performance as well as what’s ahead.
o Canada (ILC): “This past year was a bit flat; 6/49 was all right. Lotto Max slipped. Our core products continue to show strength,” said Kevin Gass, VP, Lottery Gaming, BCLC. “We benefit from having two lotto games. We do a lot to manage our jackpots. Our National Grand game is doing ok. It has been a learning experience. We are putting more promotional punch going forward. Loto-Québec used the stories of winners to leverage awareness. It is important to continually refresh games. The longer the game is in the market the more sales deteriorates. One option is a fourth national lottery game. The choice is between the established product in the market or the new product on the shelf. More and more games isn’t always the answer.”
o Euro Millions: “We have a good 2% increase. The main challenge is to keep the game exciting. We are getting less earned media from our event draws. With 10 different countries, game development can take more than two years,” said FDJ’s Atlan. “We are not a common game. We are a coordinated lottery. Some things are common. Many things are different. We are trying to merge the branding. Now we have 10 different marketing programs.”
o United States: “Powerball and Mega Millions did well last year. Mega Millions had a price increase that drove an increase of sales by more than 40%. Powerball was up over 10%. The challenge is how do we match that for next year,” said Bret Toyne, Executive Director, MUSL. “We had three large jackpots this year. Both games had high jackpots around Christmas. This dueling jacking phenomena is one of the advantages of having two national lotto games. We have a product sub development committee that is staffed with category experts from the lotteries. We are reaching down into the ranks. We are down to a few concepts that we will present in Austin. We need to introduce concepts in a smaller group of lotteries. It is difficult to get 36 jurisdictions to agree. The Lucky for Life game started with six states and grew from there.”
Efram Lebovits, Principal, LEVEL5 Strategy Group and Jodie Bates, Director, Integrated Communications at OLG, co-presented “Contemporizing Lotto 6/49.”
“LEVEL5 was asked to support the five regions of the ILC to help identify some unique territories that the brand can own—with a hope of being able to contemporize,” said Lebovits. “A key component of the work was leveraging our proprietary research tool called BrandMap™ to uncover purchase drivers that are both emotional and rational.”