iGaming Business – The New York State Gaming Commission has drafted in UK National Lottery operator Camelot Group to draw up a five-year plan to revive the US state’s New York Lottery competition.

According to the Financial Times newspaper, Camelot will carry out market research on potential new lottery games to help ease the Commission’s worries about losing gambling revenue market share to casinos.

The appointment of Camelot has also raised the prospect of the US state embracing online gambling products in order to combat the growing competition from other forms of gambling.

The news will come as a boost to New York’s education system, which takes a proportion of revenues from lottery games. In 2012-13, this amounted to $2.2 billion (€1.6 billion) of the $7.1 billion achieved in lottery sales, the highest in the country.

“The gambling landscape in New York State has changed over the past 12 months, and will continue to change and become more competitive. In order to safeguard state aid to education it is highly critical that we look at alternative approaches for the future of the lottery,” the New York State Gaming Commission’s Gardner Gurney said.

Camelot, which is owned by the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan, is familiar with lottery operations in the US having previously consulted for California and Massachusetts, as well as Canada’s interprovincial lottery operation.

In Canada, the operator introduced a multi-state game based on its Euromillions game, while it also helped to boost the performance of California’s struggling lottery products.

Camelot has enjoyed plenty of success in the UK, having held the licence for the country’s National Lottery since 1994 and recently extended the deal to 2023.

SOURCE