The Lotto Matrix: Mississippi Stays With IGT, Kansas Gets Scientific, More

According to IGT's announcement, the new mobile app will “provide players a multitude of convenience features."

Last updated: May 31, 2024

3 min

Welcome to this week’s “Lotto Matrix,” a weekly Friday compilation of the lottery industry’s most significant, interesting, or absurd happenings.

Mississippi Lottery renews contract with IGT

On Tuesday, International Game Technology (IGT) announced that its subsidiary, IGT Global Solutions Corp., inked a new three-year deal with the Mississippi Lottery Corporation. The new deal will run through Dec. 1, 2029.

Under the deal, IGT will supply the Mississippi Lottery with “online gambling and instant ticket services.” To help facilitate such offerings, IGT will provide a mobile app, new GameTouch 28 lottery terminals, and its Sales Wizard retail-automation tool. For those wondering, Sales Wizard is “an operations-facing implement intended to supply insights on sales, instant-ticket inventory, and point-of-sale equipment and signage.”

According to IGT’s announcement, the new mobile app will “provide players a multitude of convenience features, including the ability to view winning numbers, check for winning tickets, create digital pay slips, find retailers, access game information, and review responsible gaming materials.”

Kansas Lottery ups its game

The Kansas Lottery has worked out a deal to use Scientific Games’ instant game management program, which is intended to help the lottery drive up its sales.

In a press release, Scientific Games said the Kansas Lottery will be able to use “Enhancement Program” information such as “portfolio management and game planning services, data analytics, advanced logistics, licensed brand services, and retail sales and marketing support,” to improve its instant game offerings.

Scientific Games said that the Enhancement Program drove 33% better performance for U.S. lotteries using it in the fiscal year 2022-23. The program is being used by over 20 lotteries, including five of the top six performing instant game lotteries worldwide.

SG will also provide its SCiQ retail ecosystem at select Kansas Lottery retailers.

4 million bucks, collecting dust

A Michigan man had a big winner on his hands. But he had no idea it was a big winner.

The 59-year-old man, who chose to remain anonymous, had a scratch ticket sitting in a drawer, collecting dust for three months.

“When I play instant games, I never scratch off the amounts, even if I win, because I like the surprise of finding out the winning amount when I take it to a store to cash it,” he said.

“When I scratched my Millionaire’s Club ticket, I saw I won, but per usual, I didn’t scratch the amount. I put the ticket in a drawer to keep it for the next time I needed some extra cash.”

It turned out it was worth $4 million. That’s a lot of extra cash.

After three months of letting it sit, he went to the store and found out just how much he’d been sitting on. “It’s been very hard to wrap my head around,” he said.

The winner chose a $2.7 million lump-sum payment rather than annuity payments for the full amount. According to the Michigan Lottery’s press release, the man plans to use his winnings to start a new company.

What can $10 buy you?

Jeff Bezos once famously said, “Given a 10% chance of a 100 times payoff, you should take that bet every time.” Lottery odds are generally a lot lower than that, but a computer programmer in Maryland recently turned $10 into $100,000 in memorable fashion.

As the story goes, the man stopped at a gas station when he found a $10 bill sitting in his pocket.

“I looked over and saw the purple in the Money Drop scratch-offs so I decided to buy one,” he told lottery officials.

A couple of scratches later, he had himself $100K.

“At first, I didn’t believe it. I took a picture to send to my friend,” he said.

The computer programmer said he plans to pay off his bills and save the rest of the cash for a rainy day.

Technical issues hindering British Columbia lottery sales

Lotto Max jackpot is $70M — but a ticket could be hard to buy in B.C. https://t.co/EGH4rEMcJX pic.twitter.com/SilwCCYqcq
— The Vancouver Sun (@VancouverSun) May 29, 2024

One of Canada’s biggest lotteries, the Lotto Max, reached $70 million, the highest it can go, but British Columbia lottery retailers had trouble selling tickets this week due to a technical error caused by the province switching to a new computer system.

The inability to sell tickets was a big blow to all parties involved. According to a statement made to the Vancouver Sun, when the Lotto Max jackpot soars, ticket sales can rise 35 to 40%.

As you can imagine, retailers weren’t pleased.

“They promised it would be up and running Monday morning, and now it’s Tuesday morning and we’re heading into noon,” Janet Benedetti of Benny’s Market in Strathcona told the Sun.

Shelley Wong of BCLC media relations admitted there had been some problems, but said by noon Tuesday an estimated 95% of BCLC’s retailers “were up and running” with the new system.

“It is a large technology process, because we are completely transitioning from an old system to a new system (with) fully new terminals,” she said. “This was a fully planned outage.”