Ilinois Lottery Disappointed with Northstar

Jul 19, 2013
Ilinois Lottery Disappointed with Northstar
Northstar Lottery Group, a joint venture between GTech and Scientific Games, seems to be a big disappointment for the Illinois Lottery, which apparently expected better results, even though the company managed to increase lottery profits to $793.5 million with a 6 percent improvement of sales to $2.8 billion.

However, this is still short of its promised target of net income of $947 million, and Michael Jones, state lottery superintendent for Illinois, told local media that “The [Illinois] Lottery firmly believes that these profit figures can be reached with the correct strategy and tactics.

“There are millions of people in Illinois who have all of a sudden started thinking the lottery is a pretty cool thing. The lottery had a pretty good year last year,” he added.

Still, despite Jones' optimism when he said “I think we are on the right track and can reach these numbers with the right strategy,” there's still a chance that Northstar will again face fines for not meeting its commitments to the state, just like last year, since when it's been fighting a legal action over state penalties of $20 million.

What's more, the underperformance by Northstar in Illinois could serve as a strong argument to New Jersey politicians who oppose Gov. Chris Christie's plans to privatize the New Jersey lottery through Northstar.


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