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VENDORS IN TRAINING LEARN TO RUN LOTTERY MACHINES

By Wes Clement/OF THE COMMERCIAL STAFF
Saturday, September 19, 2009 8:57 PM CDT

A crowd of future lottery vendors practiced using ticket terminals Saturday morning at Southeast Arkansas College.

Barbara Jett (right) of Intralot explains the operation of lottery machines to Chris Bogy (from left), Kathy Bogy and Karrie Hamilton, from J.R. Grocery in Humphrey, Saturday morning during lottery training classes at SEARK. Photos: Pine Bluff Commercial/Ralph Fitzgerald

About 200 managers, clerks and owners of businesses accepted as lottery retailers attended one of four training sessions at SEARK.

“We actually have two teams going at the same time,” said Drew Scolaro, Intralot’s Arkansas retailer recruitment and training coordinator. “I have another team working in the north part of the state as well, and we’re doing 15 cities around the state.”

Intralot, based at Duluth, Ga., has an Arkansas office at North Little Rock. The business provides technical support to Arkansas Scholarship Lottery.

“We do all the systems,” Scolaro said. “We give them the hardware that we’re training them on today. We give them satellites and all that. We also work with Scientific Games, which is the other vendor, and they do the instant tickets.”

Stores are scheduled to begin selling instant (scratch-off) tickets on Sept. 28 and Powerball tickets are expected to be available Oct. 31.

Retailers within 50 miles of Pine Bluff were invited to the training session.

“It’s different than what I’m used to, but I’ll get it,” Sue Nichols of Bypass Self-Serve at Fordyce said.

She said the store has not yet received its ticket terminal, but the required communication satellite has been installed.

She said she would teach others at Bypass Self-Serve what she learned during the session.

Tonda McBride of Intralot gave an hour-long visual presentation of the proper use of the ticket terminals.

Training participants then went to another room to practice what they had learned on one of 28 MicroLot machines. They practiced entering a customer’s Powerball ticket numbers, printing tickets, checking financial summaries and other functions.

“I’m from Michigan, so I’m used to it,” Monica Colon said.

Colon works for the Murphy USA gas station located in front of Wal-Mart. “It’s just modern technology. Back there we did everything with manual buttons, but this is all automatic so it’s easier.”

“With Powerball, it’s a multi-state game,” Scolaro said. “So, there are 33 other states that are in Powerball as well. They’re playing all in the same pool.”

“The law in Arkansas basically states that as long as you sell other products at a store, you can sell lottery as well,” he said.

Retailers pay a $100 application fee and are to pay a $10 per week satellite communication fee. Stores will earn a five percent commission for each sale and a one percent commission each time the store cashes a ticket, Scolaro said.

Lisa Tater, the lottery’s southern regional manager was among a few Arkansas Scholarship Lottery representatives on hand to answer vendors’ questions.

Many stores in the area already have MicroLot machines, Scolaro said, and others will have them installed soon.

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