8 PUBLIC GAMING INTERNATIONAL • JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2026 From the Publisher Lottery is in the middle of a quiet reinvention. The core promise—providing safe, widely available games that fund good causes—has not changed. No other game category elevates Responsible Gaming to the mission-critical role as Lottery. But the way gaming brands, including Lottery, earn attention, build trust, deliver entertainment, and retain playership is changing fast. Our interviews and editorials track that shift through global operators scaling across borders, the fast-moving world of digital instants, and experience design for players who expect personalization, convenience, and responsible guardrails. CEO Robert Chvátal has led Allwyn on an ambitious growth plan that began 15 years ago and now includes lottery operations in the Austrian, Greek, Cypriot, Italian and UK markets, and with the acquisition of Camelot in 2023, includes the operation of the Illinois Lottery. Robert shares the vision that has brought Allwyn to this inflexion point along with the strategies and corporate culture that will propel ongoing growth. E-Instants are now a centerpiece of portfolio modernization: more animated, content-rich instant play online. But their rise also sharpens the question, “What makes a lottery product a lottery product?” EL’s Piet Van Baeveghem and NASPL’s David Gale compare European and North American perspectives on definitions, risk, and regulation—and on how the industry’s premier trade associations can help lotteries evolve responsibly and successfully. Players don’t think in channels; they think in experiences. Matthew Lynch shares how Scientific Games uses licensed brands and linked promotions to create connected retail-and-digital engagement, why extended-play mechanics keep growing, and how AI recommendations can reduce choice overload. We also explore why registration is the gateway to better Customer Experience (CX), smarter CRM, and safer personalization. A reminder that scale can be “quiet” and still remarkable. This profile traces the Iowa Lottery’s 40-year arc—from the first tickets at the State Fair to a half-billion-dollar annual enterprise. With billions in sales and returns to the general fund and veterans’ programs, CEO Matt Strawn reflects on security, logistics, and the human side of seeing winners on their best days. A brutal opening poll—100% disagreement that beneficiaries and stakeholders are outspoken in their support of lottery—sets the tone for a candid session moderated by California Lottery Director Harjinder Shergill Chima. The panel focuses on earning visible advocates, improving how we tell the beneficiary story, and turning impact from a budget line into messages that lawmakers, media, and communities appreciate and actually repeat. Lithuania’s operator Olifėja shows how disciplined portfolio management can turn an underperforming instant category into a growth engine. This article follows how Scientific Games’ decade-long partnership with Olifėja was built on research-led optimization, new price points, and steady product change—while weathering the euro transition and COVID disruption. The takeaway: sustained growth often comes from patient, data-informed execution. As iLottery catalogs balloon, discovery becomes a retention problem. Brightstar’s recommendation engine applies familiar “streaming” logic—using player behavior and game attributes to suggest relevant titles, surface trending games, and reduce choice overload. Done right, personalization doesn’t just drive revenue; it improves satisfaction and supports responsible engagement by guiding players to games that fit their playstyles and motivations. Tina Wolf, Aristocrat Interactive, connects demographics to strategy: younger adults are more likely to play across channels, and cross-channel players report higher play frequency. Tina explores how digital convenience can and should complement the retail mission—and how connected tools like ticket checking, mobile wallets, and retail cashout strengthen the ecosystem. The message: design around modern lifestyles, not legacy silos. A new game launch is just the beginning. Using a recent example from Italy, Brightstar outlines how real-world data can reveal unexpected preferences—and how disciplined iteration can improve performance. The framework emphasizes measuring the right behaviors, isolating which features drive engagement, and treating post-launch tuning as a repeatable, systematic, innovation habit rather than a one-off fix. Philippe Vlaemminck and Beata Guzik of Vlaemminck.law make a pressing case for protecting the public lottery model amid aggressive online gambling growth. They argue that governments may pursue controlled expansion policies—offering attractive, well-regulated lottery products as a “safe harbor,” paired with high responsible-gaming standards. Their call is clear: modernize, communicate, and defend the principles that make lottery different from all other games-of-chance operators. Looking ahead, a large contingent of the global community of lottery professionals convenes on Barcelona for the WLA/EL Marketing Seminar and the ICE Totally Gaming trade show during the week of Jan. 20. Then we hope to see you all at PGRI Smart-Tech Conference in Ft Lauderdale March 10-12. Check out photos of the biannual EL Congress on page 37 and PGRI Hall of Fame ceremonies on page 42. And see NASPL.org, European-Lotteries. org, and PublicGaming.org for details, registration, and updates. Let’s keep raising the bar—for innovation, responsibility, and impact. Paul Jason, Publisher Public Gaming International Magazine
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