Things are quiet at Ontario Lottery and Gaming (OLG). Too bad! The people there are fun to write about. For a government agency that contributes almost $2 billion to government revenues each year, it works at keeping a low profile. It lets its games and casinos speak for it. Not that the games or casinos are good communicators.
In fact, we are watching a race down hill here. From a strategy OLG used 25 years ago of catering to the American tourist and restraining Ontario residents, the experts have had to do some serious rethinking. And if these so-called experts knew what they were doing, the rethinking might have been more fruitful.
The problem is that an aggressive attempt at modernizing (and improving profit) of OLG was undertaken by the McGuinty government with Publisher Paul Godfrey at the helm. This came to a grinding halt when the plan for a new keystone casino complex in the big-market Toronto area ran afoul of the discordance at Toronto City Hall. The one real claim to fame of soon to be former Mayor Rob Ford was to screw Woodbine Entertainment out of becoming a super casino and putting the skids under Paul Godfrey as head of OLG.
Novice Premier Kathleen Wynne fired Godfrey and little has happened since.
But, there are rumblings. Whether it is just some stomach gas or real movement for OLG remains to be seen. There are a number of keys to this. First of all, the province has to have a new balance of relocated and modernized casinos. There has to be a new investment in Internet gaming and it has to establish new standards of openness and honesty. Once Internet gaming is established, scratch card games have to move to the Internet as well. A few printed scratch games can be offered to the non-Internet literate. Finally, lotteries have to be brought back to the reality that unless buyers see some return, fewer will keep trying for the unattainable millions.
The reality is that casinos have to have tourists. Tourists bring the money. They are there to experience. Where the tourists are so are the dollars.
If the Province of Ontario says its Internet games are honest, players will tune in from around the world.
And lottery buyers hardly want many millions. They just want to win something.
There is no problem with OLG. It is the politicians who are stupid.
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Copyright 2014 © Peter Lowry
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