Neighborhoods Ticket Wins Best New Instant Game Award
WASHINGTON, DC – The DC Lottery received the Buddy Roogow Innovation Award for “Best New Instant Game of 2018” by the North American Association of State and Provincial Lotteries (NASPL) at its annual conference held last week in Cleveland, OH.
DC’s Neighborhoods game was recognized as an outstanding contributor to the North American lottery industry over the last year, and it has the distinction of being the best-selling $10 instant “scratcher” ticket ever released by the DC Lottery. The popular ticket debuted at Lottery retailers in July 2017 and was sold out by April 2018.
Named in honor of the DC Lottery’s former executive director, the Buddy Roogow Innovation Award recognizes the efforts made by lotteries to create and communicate the innovative attributes of instant and draw games for increased sales potential. Entries were judged by a group of senior management from the Ohio Lottery, this year’s host lottery for the NASPL conference, on the following criteria: innovative aspects of the game; cost/benefit analysis results; strategic analysis and insight; and visual appeal.
The concept for the Neighborhoods ticket originated from DC Lottery’s love of the city. “For the past few years, we’ve incorporated DC-centric themes into our scratcher products with great success,” said Beth Bresnahan, the Lottery’s Executive Director. “Tickets such as DC-7s, Chuck Brown, Magic 102.3, and Racing Presidents have all ranked amongst our best-selling tickets because they resonated with our players and celebrated local Washington at its best. We’ve learned that our players, like our DC Lottery team, love when our products celebrate the “real” Washington, DC.”
To celebrate Washington, DC beyond its tourist attractions, DC Lottery developed a DC-centric ticket that featured multiple scenes of its city’s iconic neighborhoods. Each scene in the Neighborhoods game showcased locally-renown landmarks and other iconography synonymous with the neighborhood. The game offered a top “scratch and win” prize of $100,000 and $525,000 in second chance prizes —the most-ever awarded in a DC Lottery second chance contest to date.
Neighborhoods was launched in two phases between July and December 2017 and featured neighborhoods that represented DC’s four quadrants and eight wards. Phase I featured scenes from Adams Morgan, Anacostia, Brookland, Capitol Hill, Chinatown, Fort Dupont Park, Georgetown, H Street, Petworth, Southwest Waterfront, U Street and Woodley Park. The six neighborhoods featured in Phase II were Columbia Heights, Deanwood, Ivy City, Mount Pleasant, Navy Yard, and Tenleytown. These additional neighborhoods were chosen by DC Lottery players via online voting.
“We wanted to give our players, particularly Washingtonians – both life-long and newly-minted residents – the chance to explore the city and collect the various ticket scenes featuring the neighborhoods that we’ve all grown to love,” stated Bresnahan. This is the second-consecutive “Best New Instant Game” win for the DC Lottery. Last year, the Lottery took home the NASPL’s 2017 award for its $5 DC-7s ticket.
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