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whether or not a prize may be claimed. Instant tickets include a variety of themes, play styles, and prize
structures in order to offer an attractive game mix to each of the player segments. Popular game themes
include gaming, money, numbers, seasonal, annuity and extended play.
Play styles include matching like dollar amounts or symbols, tic-tac-toe, key number or symbol matches,
beat score, and add-up games. Additional play styles, such as “doubler” features, “automatic win” symbols
and “win all” symbols provide added value to the games. Players enjoy multiple chances and multiple ways
to win on each ticket.
Licensed property games also have helped serve a niche by capitalizing on well-known, branded concepts
such as the World Poker Tour
®
, Price Is Right, Monopoly, the Houston Texans and the Dallas Cowboys.
Licensed property games attract members of the public who might not typically purchase a lottery ticket,
because of their familiarity with the branded property. The agency has also developed “core” or base games,
those games that are always available for sale because of their long-term, ongoing popularity with players.
Prizes for current instant games range from $1 to $7.5 million. The majority of $1 tickets typically offer a
top prize of $1,000 or less, while $2, $3, $5, $7, $10, $20 and $50 games offer higher top prizes. The $20
price point games offer top prizes of $1 million to $2.5 million, whereas the $50 price point offers up to a
$7.5 million top prize. There also are games that provide annuity prizes that are paid out over a period of
time. As of August 2011, annuity style instant games are offered at the $2, $5, $10 and $20 price points.
While on-line games have a set number of draws scheduled each week, instant ticket games offer the
possibility of immediate winning experiences with cash and non-cash prizes. Most instant ticket purchases
are impulse buys. Therefore, it is important to create games that are attractive to players, provide frequent
opportunities to win, and offer a variety of prizes per game. In evaluating industry best practices related to
scratch-off game marketing initiatives, the Texas Lottery has added “call-outs” to faces of certain tickets.
These “call-outs” communicate to consumers specific prize amounts and/or the number of prizes in a game.
Challenges and Opportunities
While the Texas Lottery has experienced tremendous success with its instant product category, the agency
has potentially reached the maximum benefit that can be gleaned from a frequent instant game launch
strategy. Printed instant products have been available in the industry for decades and there has been limited
vendor innovation with regard to the style and features of instant products over time. The Texas Lottery’s
efforts to keep instant products fresh and interesting for the consumer must now focus on unique
opportunities to tweak existing game designs, while developing new and innovative product positioning and
marketing strategies around this product category. These efforts are critical in order to reach new players,