Here’s a question that came our way about a scratch game that recently ended, and how and why we stop distribution of a particular game.
The player noticed that we’d stopped distributing tickets in the “3-2-Won!” scratch game. He said he always liked playing it and wished we would have kept it around.
There are a variety of factors in the Iowa Lottery’s decision to end a particular game, ranging from how long that game has been on the market, its current sales level, and whether stores want to replace it with something newer. We always 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 don’t still have a chance at its top prize!
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 spots 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.
Sometimes we have specially-themed games that only run for a short period of time, like our holiday games. Those games come off the market in January each year once the holidays are over. (And it wouldn’t make sense to sell a snowman-themed game in the summer anyway!)
In other instances, if a game has been available for some time and players show us through their overall purchases that they prefer something else, that game will be removed from shelves. In the case of 3-2-Won!, that $2 game had been on the market for two years when we ended distribution of it late last month. Overall sales in newer games simply outpaced it.
When we discontinue one of our games, the lottery’s district sales representatives pick up any tickets in that game from the businesses that sell them so the game is removed from the retail setting.
Just know that we’ll keep coming up with fun, new games to replace those that are ending!
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