Player Question: Why Are You Ending That Scratch Game?

Here’s a question that came our way about a scratch game that was ending, and why and how we reach the decision to stop distribution of a particular game. The player involved made it clear he wanted to keep buying tickets in the game he was asking about, and he didn’t understand why we would pull it from store shelves.

There are generally a variety of factors involved, ranging from how long a game has been on the market, its current ticket sales level, and whether stores want to replace it with something newer.

We have dozens of scratch games for sale at any one time, but there are only so many bins for tickets in our self-service kiosks and only so many slots for tickets in our dispensers. That means some retail locations simply don’t have enough room for all the games that are out there, and individual locations can decide which games they want to sell.

Most often, we discontinue sales in a particular scratch game when the last top prize in it has been claimed. We don’t want a game on the market if you can’t still have a chance at its top prize!

Sometimes we have specially-themed games that only run for a short period of time, such as our holiday games. Those games come off the market in January each year because it just wouldn’t make sense if we were selling a snow-themed game in July! But the good news is, we work hard to keep the odds of winning the same in our holiday games as they are in the others that are on the market for much longer.

In other instances, if a game has been available for some time and players show us through their purchases that they prefer something else, it also will be removed from the shelves.

People’s reactions to our procedures are sometimes completely at odds with each other. We’ve gotten complaints from players who don’t want us to end a game at the same time we’ve heard from people who want to make sure we definitely do that, especially when the last top prize has been claimed. I suppose that’s an example of the old saying that you can’t please all the people all the time.

We do our best to design policies that err on the side of players as much as possible. So just know that we’ll keep coming up with fun, new games to replace those that are ending!

Comments

[Mary Neubauer]

Hi, Mark. When we discontinue one of our games, we send out a message to all lottery terminals in Iowa, instructing the retail locations to remove any remaining tickets in that game from sale. Our district sales representatives then pick up any tickets in that game during their next visit to the location so that the game is removed from the retail setting.

[Mary Neubauer]

Hi, Janis. Thank you for reaching out. I am not aware that there were any difficulties with our website this weekend. Perhaps trying to clear out your browser history could help.

[Mark Stenson]

Can a business continue to sell a pulled game?

[Janis Bornong]

I can not get into the Iowa lottery web page at all. Says it is under construction. But no info listed.