The third day of the SBC Digital Summit turned to lotteries, and the unique challenges they have to face as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. With many operators having to close up retail locations, and others beholden to their government partners, lotteries are facing a whole bunch of unique problems apart from the rest of the gambling industry.

The day began with a speech from the President of the Global Lottery Monitoring System (GLMS), Ludovico Calvi. He emphasized the five points of priority for the GLMS during the criss: Employee’s wellbeing, effective communication, business continuity, effective cost management, and fiscal and financial assistance, in that order.

He also offered a few predictions on what kinds of gaming companies will find success once this crisis is over. Of course, companies that emphasize safety for both customer and employee will do better than those who don’t, and those which were already financially on solid footing have a better chance of surving. But from there, companies that manage to be more agile, can push digital platforms more successfully, and apply better cross functional cooperation will likely do much better than those that cannot.

Calvi continued to emphasize that point in the first panel of the day, “How Lotteries are adapting to the outbreak”, moderated by Harmen Brenninkmeijer, CEO of Quanta, with fellow panelists Sami Kauhanen, VP of Betting, Veikkaus, and Arno de Jong, CMO of Nederlandse Loterij. He noted that companies which continue to keep their retail and digital strategies separate will have a hard time with the new normal.