Sunshine Electronic Display Corp. provided the Florida Lottery with remotely controlled jackpot displays for their billboard program in preparation for the introduction of Powerball to the state. Public Gaming discusses the benefits and implementation of the new signage with the leaders of the company.
Mark Jason, Public Gaming: You’ve got an exciting success stories with Florida and Powerball. First, tell me a bit about your product.
Joe Tewell, Vice President: This particular product is a billboard product, an accessory to a billboard. It’s a numeric jackpot display installed right over typical billboard copy. The Lottery has their logo and the word ‘million’ up on their billboard. We install a numeric mechanical display that reads jackpot information that can be updated wirelessly. Several displays can be updated at one time from one central location. All the Powerball boards throughout the states are controlled by MUSL from its central location.
We make a variety of products, from billboards on down to smaller display signage. These can be used in various applications such as subway and bus kiosks, point of purchase displays, and a wide variety of stand alone signage. All of our products utilize similar technology.
Q: The Florida Lottery had ‘normal’ billboards. What was missing with these that necessitated a change in their signage?
J. Tewell: Actually, they have had their state lotto game on billboards for years. Their lotto games changed twice a week. They actually had crews go out and manually change the jackpot information twice a week, climb up ladders with plywood sheets and actually change the numbers out to the new jackpot. Now with our signage they are able to make those same changes just by logging onto a website or making a phone call.
Q: How many billboards are we talking about here?
Kendall Randolph, CEO: We installed electronic signage on 102 billboards.
Q: So they had to send people out to 102 billboards twice per week to change the lotto jackpot information. That would seem to be a lot of labor. Then they add Powerball, which also changes twice per week.
J. Tewell: That is correct. With our signage they have eliminated that inefficient and time consuming task. Probably the most significant difference is that two or three times per year Powerball will have mid-week rolls. When the jackpot gets up to very high amounts, ticket sales may be higher than expected. When this happens, they may send out bulletins in between jackpot rolls to change the jackpot amounts. So our signage gives them an opportunity to accomplish this much more efficiently and effectively. We are, in effect, giving lotteries the ability to update all of their signs statewide from billboards down to point of purchase more often. We are hoping that will become the new trend.
Q: Joe, you mentioned that you got the installations accomplished very quickly?
J. Tewell: We got the order on October 21st. We began the installations on November 24th, and completed on the 21st of December. So we built and installed 102 locations in less than two months.
Q: And the electronic billboards are tied to their central system?
J. Tewell: All of the Powerball billboards are controlled centrally by MUSL. We do more than 30 Powerball states. We hope someday that they’ll see value in changing the Powerball jackpot every day, have people wake up looking for the new Powerball jackpot. I think they are always looking for new ways to generate interest, keep the product on the top of everybody’s minds. With enough electronic signage out there, they could change the jackpot, and effectively communicate that change, each and every night. Without electronic signage, the cost to change the jackpot amount, the jackpot bulletins and billboards, is significant.
Q: With electronic signage, is there much cost associated with changing jackpot amounts?
J. Tewell: No. It’s a fixed cost that allows them to change 31 times per month if they want to.
K. Randolph: In an article in the Tallahassee Democrat on January 2nd (found under US Lottery on this website, www.publicgaming.com, it states that the costs for upgrading to our signage was roughly $2 million. The savings in labor costs are expected to cover the upfront costs in less than two years.
The signs are solar-powered, so they don’t use any electricity. And the signs are leased, so the up-front out-of-pocket amount was much less than the total cost.
The lease amount may well be less than the day-to-day costs associated with the labor to change the signs manually. So not only does the Lottery have a much more convenient, flashier and effective signage, but they may be literally saving money every day.
K. Randolph: And they don’t have the liability exposure of someone climbing billboards in the middle of the night or early morning, with the potential for an accident.
Q: Are there other lottery success stories you’d like to relate?
J.Tewell: We are currently testing a wide variety of signs in several states to determine the relationship between outdoor signage at the point of purchase and fuel customers. Specifically how C-store chains can use lottery jackpots to pull customers from the pump and into the store to buy a lottery ticket and in addition boost inside sales of other items.
Q: Are there other products that you have available for the lottery industry?
J.Tewell: All of our products are all about jackpots - creating and maintaining jackpot awareness. We have two new products (the signs mentioned in the test) for outdoor advertising. A stand alone sign that can be placed anywhere outside the store that has a poster footprint and a stripe sign that is displayed prominently on the c-stores street signs right below the last fuel grade.
Bonnie Fussell: As a final note, all of us at Sunshine would like to say that we very much appreciate the effort and cooperation we received from the Florida Lottery and their advertising agencies in getting this task accomplished efficiently and effectively. We’re thrilled to have the Florida Lottery as a customer.
This article was originally published on the Public Gaming Research Institute website.
Back to Articles
Call us today at: 800-821-9013 ext. 48 or
