State makes changes to lottery system

| The New Mexican

11/15/2008 - 11/15/08

New Mexico Lottery players will notice some changes beginning today, including what lottery officials describe as "easier-to-read tickets with larger, darker type printed on fade-resistant paper."

A new gaming system that involves new terminals installed at 1,100 retail outlets around the state is scheduled to go on-line about 10 a.m. today.

Although clerks will have fewer buttons to push, an announcement said, transactions could take a little longer than usual to complete as clerks proceed slowly with the initial transactions.

After today, the lottery plans to begin installing self-service vending machines at various retailers across the state. In addition to selling Scratcher tickets and tickets for drawing games such as Powerball, each vending machine will include a built-in scanner so that players can check their own tickets for prizes.

The lottery also plans to place stand-alone ticket scanners at 500 retail locations. The scanners are scheduled to go into service in February.

The new system is the result of a contract awarded in November 2007 to Intralot, a Georgia-based lottery technology supplier.

Over the life of the seven-year contract, the lottery will pay Intralot a base price of 1.5 percent — or $18.2 million on projected sales of $1.15 billion.

As a result of a law passed last year, the lottery was forced to trim expenses. The lottery said it expects to save about $35.4 million over its contract rates with GTECH, a vendor based in West Greenwich, R.I., which is paid about 8.5 percent of sales on drawing games.

The Legislature acted after a group called Think New Mexico pushed for a law earmarking more lottery revenue for college scholarships.