The Ohio Lottery is planning to turn over control of some of their poplar games, Pick 3, Pick 4, Mega Millions and their upcoming Keno game to an international company that has projected to save the lottery approximately $200 million dollars over the next ten years.

Lottery officials approved the contract with Inralot, a Greek company that has their US headquarters based near Atlanta, Georgia. They will be replacing Gtech Corp. based in Rhode Island in June of 2009.

Gtech has been in charge of running most of the Ohio Lottery's computerized games since 1985. They also got the initial contract to install their Keno game at hundreds of bars and other businesses later this summer.

Inralot beat out Gtech and Scientific Games International to land the contract to run the lottery's online games and instant ticket vending machines. They got the contract by offering lower sales rates and savings on communications services and by bundling equipment. This amounted to about a savings of $200 million dollars over 10 years according to lottery officials.

"It was a competitive process," said lottery Director Michael A. Dolan. "It was blind scoring. Because of the competitiveness of the proposals that were submitted, Inralot came to us with a technological solution that's as good or better and a price that's extremely competitive."




- 2008-05-13