These massive units — while impressive to the eye — required significant manpower to manage. It could take up to a week to organize a drawing and two to four hours to actually draw and count the beads. With the new Origin Digital Draw, the time to conduct the draw was reduced to less than eight minutes.

Raymond Williams, appointed lottery director in early 2019, was ready for a change to increase efficiency while at the same time generate more excitement around the VI Lottery. The increased speed and efficiency with conducting the draw will allow the lottery to eventually add more games, even a daily game.

Marketing Director Victoria Burgess and her team created a series of videos to communicating the value to the dealers and players on making the switch to the new platform. Based on a small focus group, the feedback from the dealers has been that the new system is more trustworthy because there’s less room for human error. As the dealers are the liaison to the community their opinions and attitude towards the drawing is essential. So far, the communication is positive and has resulted in an increase in sales, even with negative impact of the pandemic.

The USVI Lottery is proving that players can adapt to new systems if the benefits are communicated clearly and effectively. Below is the new digital draw sequence created by Smartplay based on footage provided by USVI Lottery.

Here are some additional videos used by VI Lottery to communicate the new draw system and new initiatives to grow the lottery and thus increase support for community programs.