The Texas Lottery has decided to renew its contract with Scientific Games (SG) for its instant scratch games. The decision comes as SG is having to deal with the fallout from a million-dollar lawsuit. However, Texas and SG have been partners for the past 26 years. The Lone Star State decided to renew the contract based on the long relationship, giving SG another six years supplying the games.
SG published a press release (in pdf) last Thursday about the contract extension. It said, “Scientific Games’ innovative instant products, including spotlight games, families of games, Scratch My Back games offering play on both sides of the ticket, and new high-definition HD Games, have proven popular with Texas Lottery players. In 2017, the Texas Lottery was the first of 16 U.S. lotteries to launch Scientific Games’ blockbuster Willy Wonka Golden Ticket multi-state linked instant game with winners from Texas attending the Billion Dollar Challenge event in Las Vegas in spring 2018.”
The Texas Lottery has provided $1.45 billion toward education and veterans’ assistance this year. For the past 15 years, it has contributed at least $1 billion to the state annually and now has achieved record sales for the past eight years.
According to Gary Grief, the Texas Lottery’s executive director, “The Texas Lottery recognizes the continuous innovation that Scientific Games invests to create very marketable games that are not only enjoyed by our players, but help us make important contributions to education and veterans’ assistance in our state. Scientific Games is a trusted business partner, and we look forward to six more years of ‘scratch’ game entertainment that has been a vital part of the Texas Lottery’s growth over many years.”
This past May, SG signed extensions with two other lotteries—the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation and the Kentucky Lottery. In August, it introduced a new lottery gaming system in Kansas that is part of a 10-year contract awarded to the company in September of last year. This past September, it extended another lottery contract, this one with the Washington Lottery.
The gaming company operates manufacturing facilities on four continents and supplies products that “generate more than 70 percent of U.S. instant game retail sales,” according to the press release. It now serves over 150 lotteries around the world.
