Lottery
Lottery
“ There is another troubling development worldwide in that the average age of the lottery player is rising.
“ Of course it is because people are growing older, but there will be a moment when they die and that of course is the troubling thing, because if you don’ t watch it your players might die out.
“ Every lottery worldwide wants to tap into this demographic but no one has been really successful in cracking the code.
“ Getting millennials to play the lottery sounds very hard but we think we’ ve approached it from the right angle, which is starting with the needs of the millennial and building a lottery product that is relevant to them.”
Overcoming the charity hurdle Lottovate has something of an added challenge in that it not only has to get millennials interested in lottery, but it has to get them interested in donating to charity. Its research found that more than half of those surveyed donated to charities only once every six months or less. But as part of licence conditions, it has to donate 50 % of the cost of every ticket to good causes.
One way it hopes to inspire millennials is by giving them the ability to choose where their funds go – as well as picking a prize category, players choose from one of four charities.
At present, the options are the Ronald McDonald Children’ s Fund, KNGF Guide Dogs, Conservation International and the CliniClowns.
But de Goeij says they are open to adding more in future and have already been asked by players to do so.
Adding in this element of choice may have been a savvy move, if a discussion during a panel at ICE earlier this year is anything to go by.
The Modernising Lotteries panel included Lottovate’ s Susan Standiford, along with the Health Lottery’ s Yakir Firestane, former European Lotteries president Friedrich Stickler and LOT. TO cofounder Julian Bewley.
The panelists agreed that when considering whether or not to play a lottery, for players the prize money was a bigger incentive than supporting charity.
However, they also agreed that the good causes element of lotteries could be more engaging to players if they were given more choice about where their funds went.
Standiford told the panel:“ Everybody in general wants to see transparency where that charitable cause goes.
“ They would love to have the choice but in the very least they need to understand it is not this amorphic black hole of charitable good causes that things go into.
“ They really want to see that. Purpose-driven is the goal of this [ millennial ] generation.”
Another panellist cited a Mintel report that had asked people what it would take for them to play a different lottery to the National Lottery. Among the reasons given had been the chance to have their charity donation go somewhere of their choice.
There’ s also a social element to the Raffld proposition. Instead of entering alone and choosing three friends to take if they win, players can enter with a group of three friends, which will increase their odds of winning.
“ Every lottery worldwide wants to
tap into this demographic but no one has been really successful
in cracking the code”
The company has not yet given detail on the odds themselves, with de Goeij saying only that“ the odds will vary week to week because we cannot predict the number of participants per week.“ Currently the odds are very good because of the fact we are a start-up. Every week there will be one major prize paid out”. If the lottery takes off, the company could look to increase the number of experiences given away each week, though at this point de Goeij says it is too early to speculate on this.
Presumably it may also look to roll the‘ experience’ model out to other nations in some form, though for now the company says it is firmly focused on the Netherlands.
Even if it doesn’ t expand outside the Netherlands, if it proves successful it’ s likely other lottery innovators will do so. If giving away experiences turns out to be the way to millennials’ hearts it certainly won’ t go unnoticed in the igaming community. iGamingBusiness | Issue 111 | July / August 2018 107