The New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and Virginia lotteries offered considerable details of their 2024 holiday programs, with scratch tickets and eInstant games both taking center stage.
Published February 18, 2025
Many lotteries go beyond instant games for holiday choices. They may offer holiday Fast Play games or raffles, and draw games are sometimes included in holiday promotions. For an increasing number of lotteries, eInstants play a big part in lotteries’ holiday plans. The New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and Virginia lotteries provided extensive detail about all aspects of their holiday programs, including eInstants, so we’ve grouped them together here.
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New Hampshire Lottery
New Hampshire’s holiday lineup included four games: one each at $1, $2, $5 and $10. View the games in our ticket gallery.
Most successful game(s):
Our holiday games success story this past season centers around Merry Money Mania, a cross-product game launched as both a $2 scratch ticket and as an eInstant on our iLottery platform. The $2 Merry Money Mania scratch ticket is considered the most successful. As a standalone scratch ticket, it indexed 156.40 for FY25 and an index comparing FY24 toFY25 of 166.26. The scratch ticket is a remake of IWG’s eInstant game of the same name. The playstyle is a unique one, that we worked on with SG a few years ago (and that one featured IWG’s Frosty Fun eInstant). It is an analog version of an eInstant cluster match game, using HD imaging and printing it on a 4" x 6" landscape ticket, rather than a 4" x 4". See our response about “other holiday games” below for additional reasons why this is considered to be the most successful game, since it as launched on two verticals.
Changes for the 2024 holiday season:
We did not make any notable changes, but should have. For the second year in a row, we launched a pulsed version of $50 or $100 at the $10 price point. Last year, our print run for this was too long and we still had the non-holiday version in market. When we were planning the holiday games, we anticipated the previous iteration would be out of market. When this year’s game landed, though it did well, it was not remarkable. We will be using this as a lesson learned and will be varying our $10 holiday game for 2025.
Holiday campaigns and promotions:
In September, the sales staff was given the opportunity to weigh in on about a dozen holiday POS pieces (from inexpensive pieces up to expensive life-size cut-outs, etc.) that they felt they could place in stores and give a boost to our holiday scratch tickets and eInstant lineup – after all, who knows best what space they can fill at retail than the sales staff! They all fell back on the tried-and-true pieces such as 8½ x 11 POS, danglers, holiday garland and window clings.
There was a reoccurring theme in the POS: reindeer hoofprints! Our TV spot once again (third year in a row) featured NH Nick who travels the backroads of New Hampshire to deliver lottery tickets and suggest the play of eInstants online. In this year’s spot, NH Nick gives the reindeer the night off and he delivers the tickets via his vintage motorcycle with a bright red nose! We took a cue from the reindeer and their hooves were featured prominently in the POS.
We produced our holiday spot in northern New Hampshire, at an iconic tourist destination called Santa’s Village. Santa’s Village is a Christmas themed park, where regardless of age you can find your “inner-elf” – along with a herd of reindeer! They were the stars of the spot, but it gave us the opportunity to support a local business through the purchase of 100 theme park tickets to award via a social media post for our followers to enjoy right before the holidays. The post garnered more than 150 shares, 600 interactions and more than 2,500 comments for the chance to win – although we were not awarding our own product, the giveaway in the post greatly resonated with our players.
Out of the 115 different scratch ticket games entered into the NH Lottery’s My603Rewards program in the NH Lottery mobile app, our holiday lineup was a standout, making up over a quarter of all scratch tickets scanned between the November 4 launch and January 11. Leading the pack, of course, was the $2 Merry Money Mania ticket, with an impressive 79,244 scans – thanks in part to its single use promo code for free iLottery dollars. Not far behind was the $5 Holiday Riches ticket, with 73,611 scans.
The holiday season also brought a surge in new and returning My603Rewards users. While the app has historically seen a 2-3% monthly increase in new player registrations, December delivered a 5.6% boost, as players joined in the festive fun. Between the breakaway success of the holiday tickets and the Mega Millions jackpot run, the New Hampshire Lottery also saw the return of inactive My603Rewards players, increasing our total monthly active user count by 49%.
Throughout the season, players could spend their My603Rewards points to enter limited-time drawings. Forty-four lucky players scored a full book of $2 Merry Money Mania, $5 Holiday Riches, or $10 Holiday $50 or $100 scratch tickets. Three winners took home $5,000 each for a Black Friday shopping spree, and one incredibly lucky player rang in the new year with $60,000 to celebrate the New Hampshire Lottery’s 60th Anniversary!
Other holiday games:
In July 2024 we launched the Merry Money Mania eInstant game for a week for a sneak peek during our Holiday in July promotion. It features a higher payout than many of our other eInstants. The goal in July was to introduce the game and build excitement for the scratch and eInstant when they launched/relaunched for the holiday season.
Utilizing the single-use promo code enhancement with NPI, we added a unique code under the scratch off on each scratch ticket. The code is good for $5 free iLottery dollars with a minimum deposit of $10 online. The code is one-time-use only, though players can use up to 1,000 unique codes. There is a callout in red on the back of the scratch ticket that provides details for the player on how to use the code.
Our first time using this feature was on the High Roller omnichannel game last February and the results were impressive. What better time of year than the holiday period to utilize this feature to introduce more people in the gift-giving season? In an analysis done by Austin Stevenson, Digital Marketing Director at NPi, he reports there were 9,342 total single-use promo code redemptions by 2,312 unique players, noting this is an average of four redemptions per player and a total of $287,167 in deposits made when using the code. The average deposit with the code was $30, three times the required amount. A fascinating figure is the same-day deposits of $2.3 million. This represents, per Stevenson, “the total deposits that players who redeemed the bonus on days when they put the code in. Many players made additional deposits after the one made with the code.”
From the first 30 days the Merry Money Mania eInstant was active after it relaunched on October 30, it was the number one eInstant, even garnering more bets than each of the three games that contribute to the multi-state eInstant (but not more bets than the three of them combined). It had at least 35% more tickets/lines purchased than other games. For the second 30 days it was in market, the month of December, it dropped to the third most wagered eInstant, and the second most ticket/line purchased. It also had more distinct players play the game than the number two game.
For the full time period of November 1- January 31, NPi reports the game had the “most new eInstant players,” was second in “most new player bets” and “most unique players,” and third for “most bets placed” and “most house profit.”
Major lessons learned in 2024:
In addition to what we learned about the $10 game, we will likely use a single-use promo code again for the 2025 holiday season. With new and casual players receiving tickets as gifts, it is a great opportunity to showcase the various verticals we offer, with the proven ability to acquire new players and engage core, casual and lapsed players. Also, often there is hesitation in increasing the payout with any games, yet with a higher payout for the eInstant the game still provided the third most house profit.
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Pennsylvania Lottery
Pennsylvania’s holiday lineup included six games: one each at $1, $2, $2, $5, $10 and $20. View the games in our ticket gallery.
Most successful game(s):
Overall scratch-off sales were down 8.6% this past holiday season when compared to late October to mid-January of last fiscal year. Bah, humbug! However, two games in the 2024 holiday lineup rose above the rest: the $20 Jingle Jangle Jackpot and $5 National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation.
Compared to last year’s holiday games, every price point was down except for the $20. The removal of the holiday-themed $30 game in 2024 resulted in less high price point competition, but Jingle Jangle Jackpot was, notably, the focus of our retailer incentive promotion and sold 2.6% more than the 2023 game. While every other price point was seeing a double-digit decline, the $5 price point was down only 5.7% when compared to the 2023 game. This may be attributed to the usage this year of a very popular licensed property, National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation. The game benefitted from special marketing and advertising support, and retailer and player feedback were enthusiastic. This was definitely a year where we learned a lot and will be adjusting the plan for the current fiscal year, as it is outlined across the next few questions.
Changes for the 2024 holiday season:
In 2024, we launched a total of six holiday-themed scratch-off games. At the start of FY25, we shifted from monthly scratch-off launches to launches every six weeks. As a result, we decided to remove the $30 game from the holiday lineup in favor of launching one the month prior in September. That means we launched holiday games at $1, $2, $3, $5, $10 and $20. Paired with the four holiday-themed Fast Play games, two new eInstant games, one new EZ eInstant game, and a reskin of an existing eInstant progressive jackpot game, a total of 14 holiday-themed games launched this past year across traditional retail locations and our online platform.
Our goal with launching scratch-offs every six weeks was to give the new games a couple of extra weeks to establish themselves within the marketplace before the next new game launch. This also allows our marketing and advertising more time to promote the new games. While it is too soon to fully analyze the effect the new launch schedule has had on scratch-offs, early indications are that it has been an overall positive change. We are, however, adjusting the December launch date in FY26 to better accommodate the holiday sales period. The overlap of launches before actual Christmas made deciding which games to focus our efforts on a little cumbersome. In addition, we will bring back our $30 holiday-themed game because the removal ended up hurting the overall sales of the holiday scratch-offs.
Holiday campaigns and promotions:
We continued to use a similar paid marketing and promotional strategy as we have in the past with a few tweaks this year. Our overall goal for the holiday campaign is to maintain awareness to a broad audience with placements in contextually relevant holiday content wherever possible. Paid media channels highlighted the full suite of holiday tickets as well as certain executions that highlighted the licensed property, National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, and the $20, $10, and $5 tickets specifically. Those media channels included TV, OTT/streaming, online video, display with rich media units, paid social, and out-of-home (digital, 30 sheets, and permanent boards). Two new media channels for us this year included streaming radio to align with holiday listening habits and in-store radio with gas pump videos at select retailers.
A portion of our paid social campaign focused on influencer marketing. We encouraged our influencers to play off of our point of sale theme of the “Nice List,” where lottery tickets are the perfect gift for everyone on your nice list. In-store POS included posters, violators, vending equipment toppers, and gas pump signage.
In 2024, we partnered with five statewide retail chains to promote all holiday tickets with prizes that varied according to the retailer, as well as a retailer incentive promotion specific to Jingle Jangle Jackpot. The HO HO wHOa Second-Chance Drawing involved all holiday-themed scratch-offs and Fast Play games, draw games and monitor games. Each product category had its own drawing bucket that offered a chance to win up to $100,000 and some online bonus play money.
Finally, we were excited to integrate our first holiday-licensed property within a statewide retailer promotion. We executed a National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation (NLCV) in-store second-chance drawing. This promotion encouraged players of both the NLCV scratch-off and Fast Play tickets to earn an entry for a high-end cooler filled with an NLCV holiday merchandise prize pack.
Other holiday games:
There were 13 new holiday-themed games launched along with a festive reskin of the Mine Blowing Jackpot game online, for a total of 14 games in 2024. In addition to the six scratch-off games, there were four Fast Play games that launched to round out our traditional holiday game offerings. The $10 Merry Money Tree, $5 National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, $2 Gingerbread Dough Doubler, and $1 Merry and Bright Fast Play games all launched on November 5. These four games along with the six scratch-off games and all draw games were eligible for entry into the HO HO wHOa Second-Chance Drawing.
Two new holiday-themed eInstant games and one new EZ eInstant game launched in the first week of November. HO HO wHO Dunnit from Scientific Games features the Happy Holidays Jackpot and a mystery of whether the dog or the cat was the ornament-breaking culprit. Merry Money Mania and the EZ eInstant game Merry & Bright, from IWG, rounded out our very merry holiday set of games.
We also had a new Keno skin created to continue the festive theme at monitor game retail locations. The Merry & Bright skin paired perfectly with the merry theme that carried a string of bright lights from the Merry and Bright Fast Play game. We plan to pull assets from other traditional games for Keno skins in the future as this approach has been working well for us now over the last few years.
Major lessons learned in 2024:
Each year we learn more and more about what works well, what can be improved, and what matters most to our players. This year was no exception. One thing we learned is that our players liked that we added a licensed property to the holiday lineup. This was the first time we used a licensed property during the holiday season, and National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation seems to have resonated with our players, bringing something new and bright – like an entire house covered in bulbs – and energizing the holiday season.
In addition, we learned that the six-week launch pattern utilized in the second half of 2024 needs to change slightly for 2025. Our holiday scratch-off games launched two days prior to Halloween on October 29. Our next launch on December 10 included our Valentine’s Day-themed games. This led to some strategic decision-making about which games to promote and when, since players generally are not ready to think about Valentine’s Day until after the Christmas holiday season ends.
As a result, we have decided to take a close look at seasonal game performance and tweak the launch schedule at the end of 2025. We are going to launch our holiday scratch-off games a week later than normal to miss Halloween and sync up with the Fast Play games launch date. This means that every one of our traditional holiday games will launch on the same date. This alignment will help to focus our marketing, advertising, and second-chance drawing efforts. The next launch in December will then also move later to occur after the Christmas holiday and avoid some of the awkward overlap with launches.
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Virginia Lottery
Virginia’s holiday lineup included three games: one each at $1, $2 and $5. There was also a $1 New Year’s game and a $10 game that changed pulses. View the games in our ticket gallery.
Most successful game(s):
The Merry Money holiday family of games all performed well collectively as a group this past December. The most successful out of the holiday games was $5 Merry Money 50X – it saw the highest percentage increase over the same price point prior year based on claims-based sales. This game also reached the highest sell-through rate at the end of December in comparison to the $1 and $2 holiday games.
Changes for the 2024 holiday season:
While the number of holiday games launched this year was consistent with last year, 2024 was the second year of shifting our holiday launches from November to December. Although we are still doing analysis on the change to the launch schedule timing, early indicators show positive results as individual game performance has improved and the percentage of retailers with inventory in retail locations the weeks leading up the holiday is higher. Overall sales this year were up for the combined months of November and December compared to 2022, which is the last year we launched holiday games in November.
Holiday campaigns and promotions:
With the launch of our new Lottery Rewards program, we wanted to engage our players during the holiday season by leveraging that platform from a promotional standpoint. We developed an interactive digital punch card for players and once they completed it, they would earn entries into a drawing for $5,000. This promotion achieved several goals: acquired new members, provided an engaging experience and encouraged cross-over purchases between retail and online. The punch card required players to purchase two holiday Scratchers of their choice and one holiday instant online game of their choice, all of which was price point agnostic. There were five total punch cards, and each completed punch card had a multiplier of entries. For instance, a player that completed punch card #5 would receive five entries into the drawing. We had more than a 43% completion rate on punch card one and an 82% completion rate on punch card five.
Other holiday games:
Another exciting game our players look forward to each year at the holidays: Virginia’s New Year’s Millionaire Raffle. Offering some of the best odds of winning $1,000,000 and also positioned as a great gift idea, we’ve been offering the Raffle for almost two decades. Over the years, we’ve tweaked the prize structure and increased the number of available tickets. In 2024, the Raffle offered five top prizes of $1,000,000, seven prizes of $100,000 and one thousand $500 prizes. Tickets went on sale October 29 and sold out on December 27; we announced the winners on January 1.
We launched a number of holiday-themed online games this year to provide our online players the same fun and excitement as our retail products. In November we relaunched Scrooge, a popular game from 2023, and introduced Merry Money Mania, which had a slight tie to the Merry Money holiday Scratcher family of games. Both games launched in November are part of the multi-state progressive Mega Money Jackpots. With multiple games tied to this progressive jackpot, we saw the jackpot grow to over $4 million before a player in Virginia won $4.3 million playing Merry Money Mania just three days before Christmas! In December we relaunched Winter Wilds, another popular game from 2023 that also features a progressive jackpot and rounded out the holiday season with Frosty Fair Fortunes. The online holiday games were prominently displayed in our A-level advertising campaigns and included in all holiday promotions to give players a true omnichannel holiday experience with Virginia Lottery.
Major lessons learned in 2024:
Some of the key takeaways are centered around inventory, innovation and promotions. We continue to evaluate print runs to ensure the correct amount of inventory is available through the holidays, while minimizing the overflow into January when the games will be replaced with new non-holiday games. Another shift that we will look to implement is providing players with more unique, innovative products to ensure the tickets and games stand out from the rest of the portfolio. While standard holiday games perform well, each year is a challenge to increase sales and playership. From a promotional standpoint, we saw that players enjoyed the level-up engagement and appreciated that there was a maximum number of entries for the prize drawing. This was new territory for players to have to purchase both online and retail products during a holiday promotion, which was important in growing the cross-over player base. Players, as we know, appreciate the opportunity to win cash prizes, so all these learnings will be applied to next season to further strengthen the holiday program.
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