Despite a redesign and humorous new commercials, the Kansas eScratch lottery game is still underwhelming players.
The lack of success by the Kansas eScratch lottery game illustrates that lottery players do not want a game to be played on the Internet just for the sake of being an online game.
Since May, when the game was relaunched and promoted heavily, sales have been 89 percent higher than last year. But the games have still generated only $260,000 in the last month and a half, a mere drop compared to the $224 million the lottery took in last year and well below original sales goals of $20,000 a day.
With eScratch, billed the "first-of-its-kind interactive Internet lottery game," players buy a ticket from a retailer and then go to a Web site where they can play video games to see if they've won any money. The game has no bearing on how much the person wins, Kansas Lottery spokeswoman Sally Lunsford said, but is purely for entertainment.
In fact, players don't have to go online and can ask the retailer where they buy the ticket to scan it to see if they won.
That fact is lost on many players who think you have to have a computer to play, retailer Chris Patel told The Hutchinson News.
"(Customers) asked about it and, at first, I tried to push it a lot, but nobody has time for it," said Patel, owners of the Zip Trip gas station in Hutchinson. "Who wants to go home and sit in front of a computer?"
State officials have promoted the redesigned game heavily on radio and television in commercials, including one in which a group of Japanese businessmen marvel at Kansas' ingenuity.
The biggest change has been the cost, as officials raised the minimum cost to 50 cents, eliminating 10-cent games that had infuriated retailers having to pay out prizes of less than a dollar.
What they need to do is bring the balls back.
And join MUSL Hot Lotto, which uses balls.
no one wants the bells and whistles , they want fair games and good payback percentages. Who the hell wants to buy a game and then have the retailer check it, where is the enjoyment with that.
State officials have promoted the redesigned game heavily on radio and television in commercials, including one in which a group of Japanese businessmen marvel at Kansas' ingenuity.
I'm sorry I missed that one. Makes me regret not having a television, but I can sort of visualize it:
A bus pulls up to a convenience store, group of Japanese businessmen with twenty cameras per capita hanging off their necks empties into the store looking for a pick-me-up of fortune cookies and saki, but keeping a sharp lookout for US Marine Corps machine gun nests behind the candy bars.
Then the inevitable happens, their envy leading to a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, a long series of sea battles, the bombing of Shanghai and Nanking, ultimately two atomic bombs detonated over Japanese cities.
Whew. Great commercial. Kansas ought to get an award for that one.
Jack
no one wants the bells and whistles , they want fair games and good payback percentages. Who the hell wants to buy a game and then have the retailer check it, where is the enjoyment with that.
That way you can find out you lost quicker. Think of it as a time saver.
Sometimes hi-tech is not the way to go.
you got that right......