Category: challenges

respond or fail

Outlook for the Big Games in 2016

I used math models to explore how matrix changes in Powerball will likely increase sales (as we all want) and increase year-to-year variability (as nobody wants), and estimated the likelihood of a Powerball jackpot exceeding $1 billion in 2016 at about 17%. A few weeks after this publication appeared, that event did happen. As I remarked to some at the time, same odds as Russian Roulette (just saying). NASPL Insights December 2015

US Lotteries Review 2013- Recovery from Recession

I examined the recovery of the US instant business in particular, after instant sales in most jurisdictions were set back by the start of the Great Recession. I found that due to migration of the business to games of higher price point (and lower profitability), only in 2013 did the purchasing power of Net Win (or Gross Gaming Revenue) first exceed its pre-recession level. This work appeared in WLA US Lotteries winter 2014.

The Dashboard According to Jade

In my continuing discussion with Veronique, Jade, and their colleagues at the ad agency, Jade emerged as the champion of the view that the end-effect of actual sales is likely the most sensitive measure for demonstrating the combined effects of all kinds of lottery advertising and promotions. Advertising efforts may aim to influence sentiment, and they may be effective, but the player is more likely to express this by spending an extra dollar, rather than by changing the way she responds to a survey question. Further, although our efforts may be focused on a particular game at a particular time, we hope the effect of these efforts is more diffuse and longer-lasting. This suggests a measurement strategy aimed at detecting improvements across the portfolio, which I am glad to implement as the Dashboard According to Jade.

No Really- I’m On Your Side!

The methods of hypothesis testing I learned as a scientist are applicable to many situations, including testing the effectiveness of advertising. The “null hypothesis” – the assertion that nothing has changed – is central to the method. This has the effect of putting me (the testing expert) in a position that feels adversarial, to those who are trying to show an effect of their work. In NASPL Insights June 2014 I recount how my first encounter with a client exposed both my methods, and their feelings.

Seeing Prize Structures

The common feature of both printed and online instant games is the prize structure- the allocation of limited prize funds to prizes of different size and abundance. The prize structure is a purely quantitative feature that determines the wins experienced by players. The prize structure also determines the profitability of the game. Historically, it has received less attention during development of instant games than the play style or “reveal”, or the appearance of the printed ticket. I developed applications to express the winning experience delivered by complex instant game prize structures as graphics that the whole team can learn to interpret, at the speed of conversation.Design discussions now focus on “what is the player’s experience?”, and how to improve that experience. Quantitative changes to the prize structure can be evaluated on the fly, both for their effect on the winning experience and for their effect on profitability. NASPL Insights December 2013

Automating the Lottery Instant Game Supply Chain

In NASPL Insights January 2012, I report on the Business Rule Test (BuRT) project. A six-month project at WA Lottery showed that a fully automated system supported retailers as well or better than the inside sales/telephone sales that was standard at the time of the test. One key to the success of this project was to provide the sales representatives a way to provide information to the system based on their local knowledge. Another key was to harvest higher-level data from the gaming system to understand which games were trending in the marketplace. I posited a set of business rules, implemented them as code on a generic computing platform (VBA/ Excel!), and compared consumption of instant tickets from retailers who participated in the test, to a control group. The test retailers saw a sales increase.