New (or improved) draw games, Fast Play, and higher price points for instant games all help drive lottery sales – and revenues for good causes.
By Patricia McQueen
Published August 20, 2024
There has been a lot of work on game development in recent years, as lotteries strive to compete in a world saturated with entertainment options for consumers, in both the physical and digital worlds.
Among the multi-state games, Mega Millions is preparing for a new game format next year, while Powerball is leveraging its brand power with that of other organizations, like NASCAR. The two for-life games are also discussing changes. Then there’s Cash Pop, a simple yet versatile game now offered by 14 lotteries.
There are other pockets of innovation, such as the Arizona Lottery’s development of Quick Draw games and Ontario Lottery and Gaming’s ongoing efforts to find engaging new games for players.
ADVERTISEMENT
Then there’s the Fast Play category of games that are printed on demand, first introduced by the Minnesota Lottery in 2004 (launched as G3 games and eventually rebranded there as Print-N-Play). With the Kansas Lottery adding Fast Play in June, this game category is now offered by 27 lotteries in the United States. All but seven of those lotteries currently offer players a choice of games with set top prizes and games with progressive jackpots, often with different games feeding different jackpots. As the newcomer to the product line, Kansas currently offers only games with set top prizes. The remaining six lotteries – in Georgia, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, North Carolina and Wisconsin – rely solely on progressive jackpot games, with a variety of games and price points all feeding a single jackpot.
For most lotteries, their Fast Play category games top out at $10 or $20 price points. Arkansas and Minnesota have lower limits, while Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Montana and Pennsylvania go to $30.
The Illinois Lottery rocketed to the top of the group in terms of Fast Play sales, thanks to its status as the first lottery to offer these games online as well as at retail; online Fast Play sales began in November 2021. The Georgia Lottery relaunched the category last September, replacing its Print n Play games with Quick Win. All Quick Win games are offered both online and at retail. The Pennsylvania Lottery offers selected Fast Play games at retail and online, and in some cases the same theme is also used for a scratch game, further expanding the omnichannel experience.
ADVERTISEMENT
Cash Pop
Fast Play has been around for 20 years, while a relatively new kid on the block is Cash Pop. Few draw games are as adaptable as Cash Pop, an IGT game that was first introduced by the New Jersey Lottery in late September 2019. It launched there as a 4-minute complement to Quick Draw (Keno). In Cash Pop, only a single number is drawn from a field of 1 to 15. Players choose how many numbers to pick and how much to wager; they can also play all numbers for a guaranteed win. Those options, plus quick picks, let each player define the game experience they want.
The next lottery to take the plunge was Georgia in December 2019, with five drawings per day available at both retail and through the iLottery platform. The next month, the Kentucky Lottery followed suit with sales at both retail and online, but went a similar route as New Jersey with Cash Pop drawn every four minutes as a complement to Keno.
After that, it was two years before another cluster of lotteries launched the game – of course those were two very challenging years for everyone with many projects on hold. In January 2022, Florida and Virginia launched with five drawings daily (Virginia has not yet added the game to its iLottery system). In an interesting turn of events, Florida discontinued Fast Play to make room for Cash Pop. In the same time frame, South Carolina added Cash Pop with two draws daily. That February, West Virginia implemented the game every 15 minutes.
From that point, there were regular adoptions: Missouri in May 2022 (five draws daily), Mississippi in November 2022 (two draws daily), Indiana in April 2023 (five draws daily), Washington in October 2023 with just one drawing per day, and Michigan in April 2024 (every 14 minutes at retail only).
The two most recent implementations were Maryland in May (four draws per day) and Maine in June (five draws per day). These two are notable because they are the first to launch under a license agreement; all previous introductions were with lotteries already served by an IGT gaming system. In Maryland and Maine, Scientific Games integrated Cash Pop into the gaming system it operates for each lottery.
The flexibility of Cash Pop is a big reason why lotteries are finding it a good fit – whatever they may need. “We like the way Cash Pop has expanded our draw game portfolio in a way that’s differentiated from the rest of our games,” says Kate Airey, Director of Product Development for the Maryland Lottery. There are two highly successful monitor games in the state, each with drawings about four minutes apart. Racetrax actually outsells Keno and was the Lottery’s highest-selling draw game in FY24, followed by Keno. “A number of other states have five Cash Pop drawings daily, but given the strength of our monitor games, four draws felt like the right number for us, and it also leaves us the flexibility to add a fifth drawing if it makes sense in the future.”
Planning for future growth also factored into the Michigan Lottery’s implementation of Cash Pop. It’s the second lottery to introduce Cash Pop on a schedule of roughly four games per hour – every 14 minutes. It launched in mid-April this year, several years after the Lottery originally intended. The pandemic put Cash Pop and a few other initiatives on hold.
Through all that waiting time, Michigan always pictured Cash Pop as a game that would do well primarily in social establishments as a complement to its successful Club Keno game. It was therefore important to have a draw frequency that would make it interesting for people spending an hour or two in those locations. That ruled out what several other lotteries were doing with five drawings per day.
“At the same time, we also wanted to leave ourselves room for future growth,” explains Chris Pate, the Michigan Lottery’s Draw Games Product Manager. The 14-minute interval was designed to fit in line perfectly with the Club Keno drawings, which are every 3.5 minutes. The long-term plan is to eventually increase the frequency of the Cash Pop drawings, perhaps triggering growth first with a 7-minute interval and then eventually matching Club Keno's interval.
ADVERTISEMENT
After all, that pattern worked well with Club Keno, which first launched in 2003 with a 5-minute interval. It eventually went to every four minutes, triggering an impressive increase in sales. A few years after that, a move to every 3.5 minutes had a similar effect. “By doing nothing else to the game other than increasing the frequency of the drawings, it really makes an impact on the bottom line,” says Pate.
So far, Cash Pop is doing much better than anticipated in Michigan – at about 13 cents weekly per capita, sales are little more than double what was expected. Since launch, sales have already reached $28.6 million, when projections for the partial fiscal year (which ends September 30) were $16.3 million. “That’s very encouraging to us.”
Unlike Club Keno, which is a game that will stay only in the retail market, Cash Pop may eventually find its way to Michigan’s iLottery game portfolio. Blame the pandemic delays for launching only at retail; the original goal was to launch in both channels. “The game was delayed for so long in retail that when we found an implementation opening there, we had to take it."
However, that timing didn't work on the iLottery side, and for now getting Cash Pop online isn’t a priority with everything else going on. Lottery officials will welcome the opportunity if it comes. “It’s just a matter of coordinating it with programming schedules,” explains Pate.
For the launch, the Lottery had a full advertising campaign across multiple media, and a second wave of that campaign is planned for the period after the November election and before the holiday instant ticket campaign kicks in around Thanksgiving. In 2025, there will be at least one promotion; Pate is currently looking around the industry to evaluate what other lotteries have done to help find what might work best for Michigan.
Instant Developments
While Cash Pop is a fairly recent innovation that is still spreading across the industry, the fact is that not all new ideas have staying power. Maybe players didn’t quite embrace a new game – or game category – as a lottery intended. Or maybe other challenges emerged along the way that were perhaps unforeseen in the early stages. And that’s OK – there’s always a learning experience.
Loto-Québec, for example, has a long history of innovation, and currently offers one of the deepest lottery portfolios in North America. In 2019, the organization introduced its first multi-player scratch game, Boîte de bingo, seeking to capitalize on emerging social trends. It was followed by Battleship and Monopoly. The category was strategically designed to offer players a new range of fun, group-playable games.
ADVERTISEMENT
The games really resonate with the 25-34 age group, achieving higher brand recognition, purchase incidence, and representation among those players. The $10 Monopoly game in particular has been appealing to younger audiences, with twice the purchase incidence among the 18-34 demographic. Yet even as that desired result is met, all these games remain very niche products. As such, there are other considerations.
Due to the challenging marketing of these non-standard format products and the occasional lack of additional advertising budgets to promote these unique offerings, Loto-Québec has decided to shift its focus to other categories.
One seemingly unstoppable trend in the instant game category is the move up the price point ladder. In 2007, the Texas Lottery was the first in North America to launch a $50 instant game. Today, 25 American lotteries offer one or more $50 games, with more than 50 games on the market across those lotteries. With seven such games, offering top prizes of $1 to $5 million cash, Texas is far and away the industry leader.
Texas has also led the way at the $100 price point, becoming the first American lottery to offer a $100 game with the launch of $20 Million Supreme in May 2022. It offered four top prizes of $20 million cash and remains in the market with one top prize still available. Two more $100 games have been introduced since then, so Texas currently offers three $100 games. Each offers different value propositions, with $20 million, $7.5 million and $5 million top prizes.
The only other American lottery to venture this high is the Oklahoma, which brought out Deluxe Gold in February 2023. With a limited quantity print run, its two $5 million top prizes are still available.
In Canada, Ontario Lottery and Gaming launched the $100 Ultimate ticket last year with a unique hybrid concept. It offered 10 instant prizes of $100,000, plus 40 $1 million prizes via a drawing that was held on January 4 this year. It was marketed as Ontario’s best odds to win a million; learn more about this game in OLG’s feature article on innovation.
Western Canada Lottery Corp. has also ventured into the $100 instant territory, with two releases of a game also called Ultimate. The first was last August and a second iteration is new this month. Both offer $1 million top prizes, favorable overall odds, and the region’s “best odds to win a million.”
ADVERTISEMENT
At the $50 price point, the crowd is growing. Texas may be the leader, but others have also enthusiastically embraced these games based a review of product offerings as of early August. Michigan currently shows four $50 games, but one has all top prizes claimed and is on its way out. Among the others, Arizona, Colorado and Missouri each have three $50 games; Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kentucky, Maryland, Massachusetts, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Virginia and Wisconsin have two each; and Connecticut, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, North Carolina and Rhode Island currently offer one $50 game.
More than half of the $50 games across the U.S. advertise top prizes as their actual cash value; top prizes in the remaining games are annuity values. Of course, the larger the lottery, the greater the prize values. In most cases the top cash prizes are $1 million or more – and there are typically less than a handful of those in each game.
One notable exception is the $50 game offered by the Minnesota Lottery, simply called CA$H. Alone among the current $50 games on the market across America, Minnesota’s game has 100 top prizes of $100,000 each. The odds of winning one of those top prizes are an extremely favorable 1 in 12,218.70 – better odds than five lower prize tiers in the same game. The ticket art even calls out the abundance of $100,000 prizes. Overall, the odds of winning any prize are 1 in 2.89.
“Our players at the $50 price point understand odds,” explains Minnesota Lottery Scratch Game Product and Customer Support Manager Todd Vodden. “They prefer to have the option of choosing to play a game with better odds to win $100,000 vs. long odds to win $1 million.”
In fact, savvy Minnesota players pay attention to odds on other games too. “Offering many low top prizes in our games has been incredibly successful for us – not only at the $50 price point but at the $20 and $10 price points and even the $5 games.”
ADVERTISEMENT
There’s a cost factor too. He adds that Minnesota used to offer a $1 million top prize for $50 games, but it wasn’t cost-effective at the Lottery’s size. “We were absorbing a lot of overage costs, which would eat into our operating expenses.” A typical print run in the state is about 1.2 million tickets for a $50 game, which takes an average of 18 months to two years to sell out. “When we were offering three $1 million top prizes in a $50 game, we’d incur expenses if all three top prizes were claimed before all the tickets were sold.” (In Minnesota as in many other jurisdictions, scratch games are removed from the market once the last top prize is claimed.) “Prior to this format, our scratch game overage expenses were multi-millions of dollars every year. Now, we average about $300,000 each year.”
In Canada, Ontario Lottery and Gaming has a somewhat similar strategy with its current provincial $50 game, $50K Casino. It offers forty top prizes of $50,000 each, with odds of winning one of those top prizes an attractive 1 in 25,195.
Ontario also offers the national $50 game Mega, sold in all Canadian provinces and territories, with a $5 million top prize.
Always Looking Ahead
While the variety in price points, game play and game themes give instant games a distinct advantage when it comes to attracting player attention on an everyday basis, there’s no doubt that jackpots matter, especially with national games. Even better, those big lotto games also return more to lotteries’ beneficiaries than do instant games. When jackpots roll, good causes reap the benefits.
Yet the lottery industry is so much more than instant games and giant jackpots. Even relatively small jackpots like those in Fast Play progressive games are attractive, especially because they don’t require waiting for a drawing that may be a couple of days away. And the prospects for multi-state Fast Play games are enticing. At another end of the spectrum, Cash Pop has provided simplicity in an adaptable product to fit different game portfolios.
It’s a never-ending challenge keeping up with changing player behaviors and expectations. Historically risk-averse, lotteries may not always want to take chances on something new, but it can certainly be worth the effort.
Related Content:
Comments