Virginia Lottery

Last week, the Virginia Lottery sales and marketing teams, along with a few other employees from headquarters and the customer service centers, gathered in Roanoke for the annual Sales and Marketing conference. The theme of this year’s conference was "We are One." Per tradition, the second day ended by recognizing sales and marketing employees with the Virginia Lottery Awards, or VLAs, as we like to call them. Employees were looking sharp for the awards dinner and 360 photobooth, including emcee Lindsay Yowell in his tuxedo/vending machine combo. Congratulations to this year’s VLA winners!

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$934 MILLION!! This afternoon, Lottery Executive Director Khalid Jones presented a ceremonial check to Governor Glenn Youngkin for $934 million. That is a record in Virginia and an 8.5 percent increase from last year’s amount of $867 million. “The record profits are a byproduct of every Lottery employee’s extreme dedication to our mission of contributing to our K-12 public schools one play at a time. We are pleased that the Lottery was able to deliver for the Commonwealth once again, and in an even bigger way than ever before," said Lottery Executive Director Khalid Jones. The record profits were driven by record sales of more than $5.5 billion in the fiscal year that ended June 30. People who chose to play did so at one of more than 5,300 businesses across Virginia, or online through either the Lottery’s mobile app or at valottery.com. “Virginia businesses that partner with the Lottery by selling tickets earned more than $142 million in sales commissions and bonuses in FY24, a record amount” said Virginia Lottery Board Chairman Ferhan Hamid. “Customers who buy Lottery tickets at retailers typically make other purchases as well. The Lottery is good for Virginia businesses.” Of the $5.5 billion in Lottery sales for the year, a record $4.2 billion went back to players as prizes! That means for every dollar spent playing Virginia Lottery games, approximately 77 cents went back to players.  

Our own Virginia Lottery executive director Khalid Jones was featured as a 2024 Black Executive on the Rise by CDC Gaming Reports, a North American news and analysis source for the gambling industry. The article highlights seven executives from across the gaming spectrum, including casino executives, vendor partners, and regulatory executives at the state level. You can read his Q&A, by clicking on the link under his photo at the bottom of the main article. Congratulations, Khalid!

Last week, attendees at the NASPL Professional Development Seminar in Omaha celebrated the 2024 Powers Award and Ott Brown Scholarship winners. The Powers Award recognizes a senior lottery employee for their significant contributions. The drive, commitment, and integrity exhibited by the recipients of this award are nothing short of amazing and set the standard of excellence we all strive to achieve. Many are nominated for the award each year, but only one Lottery employee can be honored with the title annually.  This year's winner was our very own Tony Russell! "He's been so many things to this lottery over the course of his career, even most recently serving as interim director. But what he is for us every day is motivator in chief, and we love him for that," said Virginia Lottery Executive Director Khalid Jones. Tony had many notable highlights during his tenure as interim director, including leading the agency during the 2024 General Assembly Session, coordinating and negotiating legislative initiatives including the potential establishment of an additional casino, skill games, potential headquarters relocation, a gaming commission study, and many, many more. We could not think of a more deserving recipient for this award! Tony wasn’t the only Virginia Lottery employee honored in Omaha. The Ott Brown scholarship was created with the intention to cultivate future industry leaders by providing opportunities to learn and grow. It is awarded to just one U.S. Lottery employee each year to attend the Lottery Leadership Institute, and we are so proud that our controller, Courtney Shearer, was selected to win the 2024 Scholarship! Courtney joined the Lottery in 2022 as controller, a new position established in recognition of the increasing complexities of financial accounting standards and the expansion of the Virginia Lottery's responsibilities. Since then, Courtney has led an amazing team that has played an integral role in ensuring our financial integrity as an organization. Congratulations, Courtney and Tony, on these well-deserved honors!

Virginia has billions of reasons to celebrate NASPL’s Lottery Week! Over 12 billion reasons, if we’re being specific 😉. This week, we are joining lotteries across North America in celebrating Lottery Week, July 15 – 19, 2024. Lottery Week is an initiative organized by the North American Association of State and Provincial Lotteries (NASPL). It’s dedicated to showing how citizens benefit from lotteries in their states.   As you may know, 100% of Virginia Lottery profits go to public education, including more than $12 BILLION for K-12 public education since 1999! Every school district in Virginia benefits from the Lottery through programs like early reading intervention, textbooks, class size reduction and more.   But its bigger than just us - there are 48 lotteries in the United States: 45 states plus the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Each with a specific designated beneficiary. Some states use their lottery profits for things like tax relief, parks and recreation or veterans’ programs. The majority of states use their lotteries, like Virginia, to benefit education. “All of us take pride in our mission of contributing to Virginia’s future, one play at a time," said Virginia Lottery Executive Director Khalid Jones.

With the end of our Fiscal Year 2024, we wanted to celebrate a few Marketing accomplishments. These are just some highlights of the incredible work done every day by the Marketing Team, that helped push us to achieve record sales this year. 1. July 11, 2023 – Launched first iLottery multi-state linked progressive jackpot with Mega Money Jackpots on Jackpot Spectacular. Jackpot Spectacular was the highest selling Online Game in FY24, and Banker’s Bonus produced the largest Online Game winner of $5,794,332!! 2. October 17, 2023 - Introduced $1 Print ‘n Play (PnP) price point. The price point accounted for 11% of all PnP tickets purchased in FY24. 3. March 5, 2024 - Launched our second $50 Scratcher, 500X The Money. The $50 price point accounted for approximately 19% of total Scratcher sales in FY24. 4. June 3, 2024 - Launched Lottery Rewards program!

Congratulations to our final Thank a Teacher winner of 2024! Mary Ann Keffer is a special education teacher at James Wood High School in Frederick County. In partnership with IGT and NeoPollard Interactive, Ms. Keffer has won $2,500 cash. The school where she works will also receive $2,500 in supplies thanks to The Supply Room! 💚

CALLING ALL VIRGINIA DANCERS! Dancers Casting Call for a new Virginia Lottery commercial. Need to be able to follow choreography well, must be 18+ and must be a current Virginia resident. Hero dancer: Female, aged 20 - 35. We also need a variety of different groups of people for the featured dancers and extras. Looking for dancers/performers of all ethnicities, genders, dancing styles and ages (18+). Shoot dates: 7/2/24 and 7/3/24 Rehearsal: 7/1/24 Callbacks: 6/19 Submission deadline: 6/16 by 10:00 a.m. For details on casting, submission info, and more, visit: https://lnkd.in/eNPJ2MWP. If you have questions or comments, contact casting@liquidtalentgroup.com. The Virginia Lottery is not able to answer questions regarding casting, so please reach out to Liquid Talent.

We've had the pleasure of surprising and celebrating two more 2024 Thank A Teacher winners! Congratulations to Matthew White who teaches math at Virginia High School in Bristol. And congratulations to Sally Drake who teaches third grade at S. P. Morton Elementary School in Franklin, VA. In partnership with IGT and NeoPollard Interactive, Mr. White and Ms. Drake have both won $2,500 cash. Plus, the schools where they work will each receive $2,500 in supplies thanks to The Supply Room! 💚