Lottery
Lottery
ARE experiences THE KEY to getting
MILLENNIALS to play lottery?
Zeal’ s Lottovate has launched a lottery that gives players experiences rather than cash prizes. Will it attract the elusive younger generation, asks Joanne Christie?
For most igaming firms no generation has proven more elusive than millennials.
Lotteries, in particular, have struggled to find a way to connect with the younger generation, even when they’ ve developed digital offerings in a bid to adapt to changing consumer shopping habits.
Take the UK’ s National Lottery, for example. The Gambling Commission’ s 2017 annual report on gambling participation showed that while those aged 25-34 saw the biggest increase in online gambling participation, they were playing the lottery less.
A similar lack of enthusiasm for lotteries among millennials has also been noted in the US.
But digital lottery company Lottovate, owned by Zeal Network, thinks it may have found a way to attract this age group to lottery – by providing experiences instead of cash prizes.
“ Numerous studies have revealed that millennials value experiences over things, so much so that many have taken to referring to them as NOwners”
Its new Dutch lottery, the first new lottery in the country for nearly 30 years, is being described by the company as the world’ s first“ experience” lottery, so called because instead of players winning prizes, they win experiences.
Raffld’ s front page even boasts the tagline,“ F’ ck money. Make Memories”, a clear call to action for a demographic regularly reported to be more interested in funding travel than saving for a house or a pension.
Experiences over things Numerous studies have revealed that millennials value experiences over things, so much so that many have taken to referring to them as NOwners. Taken in this context, perhaps an experience lottery has potential. With Raffld, rather than buying a ticket for a chance to win cash, players choose from one of four prize categories: 360 adventure, city all access, bucketlist tickets and recharge break.
The winner and three friends then set off on experiences such as sandboarding in Morocco or attending the La Tomatina tomato fight near Valencia, depending on which category they’ ve chosen.
Peter-Paul de Goeij, managing director of Lottovate Netherlands, says the prizes were devised after extensive research was undertaken and interviews conducted with more than 1,000 millennials in the Netherlands.
“ What we did is, when we got the licence we basically threw away all the ideas that we had and said,‘ OK, let’ s first speak to some consumers’.
“ We asked them very general questions like,‘ What is your view on life, what do you think is important, would you support charities, do you ever play the lottery, if not why not’.
“ With the results of those interviews we took out the four basic elements of the answers that we’ d been given by these Dutch millennials, and these four elements led to Raffld.”
Looking at the results of their research, it’ s clear the company needed to come up with something different.
The interviews, conducted by Ruigrok NetPanel for Lottovate, found that 62 % played the lottery twice a year or less, whereas 85 % said experiences made them happier than having money.
It is undoubtedly difficult to entice the millennial generation into lotteries, says De Goeij, but doing so is vital if the vertical is to survive in future.
“ All lotteries know that this is the toughest group to crack because it doesn’ t really matter where you go, the average age of the lottery player is older than this age bracket.
“ The average lottery player in the Netherlands is older than 50 years, which is, in comparison, quite old.
106 iGamingBusiness | Issue 111 | July / August 2018