This is a guest contribution by Tom Mitchell. If you would like to submit a contribution please contact Bill Beatty for submission details. Thank you.

The promise of a better tomorrow is a powerful sentiment. Of course, as we all know, better tomorrows don’t necessarily arrive on schedule, or quite as planned. Yet the very hope that one moment can immeasurably change things for the better connects with our eternal pursuit of happiness. It’s the same with jackpots, whose regular payouts offer that truly transformative sum of money. Potentially, at least, that life-changing moment is just around the corner. And you don’t even need to wait till tomorrow!

As such, based on the traditional product-range of even the most multi-channel provider, jackpots remain a central instrument in any operator’s orchestra. On balance, whatever the competing distractions, players will always be inexorably drawn to game where there is a big-money prize on show. It’s a call to action from the fabric of our innate wishful thinking.

Small wonder, then, that lottery jackpots consistently rank among the more popular products with players. Simply take the Gambling Commission’s 2015 report, Gambling Behaviour in Great Britain, which found that 46% of the UK Population played the National Lottery, 23% bought scratch cards, while 15% pursued other jackpot lotteries. Compare those numbers to, say, slots whose figures garner a relatively lowly 7% for reported player engagement.