As a business with a limited number of potential customers in a sparsely populated territory, North Dakota's state lottery office has been concentrating on ways to keep its expenses down.
It has only six employees, including its director. Its main computer sits in Montana, a few feet from another machine that handles the river of numbers for the Montana Powerball game and other lotteries.
Because it does not sell "scratch tickets," the games that let players know immediately whether they've won or lost, the lottery does not have its own customer service representatives to supply tickets to its 396 lottery retailers, said Chuck Keller, the state lottery director.
The lottery is also part of the North Dakota attorney general's office, which can provide legal, secretarial and law enforcement support, such as doing background checks on lottery retailer applicants, Keller said.
"Since we have a very small population, we have very unique business challenges," he said.
One of the lottery's unusual aspects is that it does not have a data processing center in North Dakota. The red terminals that spit out Powerball numbers take their orders from a machine in Helena, Mont.
Scientific Games International Inc., a company that supplies North Dakota's lottery terminals, computer and communications equipment, keeps the primary machine in Helena, along with backup data for lottery operations in Iowa and Arizona.
Scientific Games, which is based in Alpharetta, Ga., also has a lottery servicing contract in Montana, although the state owns its own lottery computer and terminals.
Jerry LaChere, director of the Montana Lottery, said Montana did not get any discount for having North Dakota's lottery computer housed with Montana's. Both sit in a room the size of a spacious living room.
"In terms of any benefit to us, there isn't any. There isn't any negative factor to us, either," LaChere said. "It's physically there in a place where there would be empty space otherwise."
Under Scientific Games' North Dakota contract, the company gets 10.63 percent of lottery sales. Keller believes the arrangement allowed the company to make a lower commission bid.
The company's service technicians, who normally concentrate on repairing equipment problems, also are being used to deliver lottery brochures, signs and other promotional material, Keller said.
About 21 cents of every lottery dollar will go into North Dakota's government treasury, for spending on state programs. Fifty cents goes to prizes, while retailers take 5 cents as their own commission.
About 8.1 cents will be spent on administrative and operating expenses, 3 cents for marketing, and 2.3 cents for gambling addiction programs.
"Our lottery has to be different to succeed," Keller said. "We have different business challenges to meet. We have a large state, and a small population, and that presents a challenge."
The Powerball lottery, which was introduced in North Dakota last week, will not be the state's only game for long.
Two additional multistate lottery games, called Hot Lotto and Wild Card 2, are being introduced in June. Both have smaller top prizes, and less daunting odds of winning a jackpot. They are played in fewer states than Powerball, which is available in 25 states.
Just imagine how much ND will help Hot Lotto.
Yeah they might contribute a couple hundred dollars to each drawing.
North Dakota who needs it. Give it to Canada.
Chas