Background
Washington’s Lottery offers games of chance to maximize contributions that benefit people and programs across the state. Its mission centers on supporting beneficiaries, enhancing the player experience and operating responsibly and efficiently.
The organization has conducted a tracking study for years to measure lottery participation, attitudes and other key metrics among Washington residents. Required by state law, the tracker provides a consistent record of how Washington residents engage with and perceive the lottery.
Challenge
Over the years, the tracker had grown as new questions were added to address emerging business needs and issues, from sports betting to COVID-19. Eventually, the survey reached 28 minutes.
Washington’s Lottery was losing confidence in whether the results accurately represented Washington residents. People willing to complete a lengthy survey about the lottery were more likely to be core and frequent players, potentially leaving casual players and non-players underrepresented.
The team needed to make the tracker more representative while preserving the consistency and long-term measures that remained important to the organization.
Solution
Washington’s Lottery turned to Angus Reid to evaluate its long-running tracker and determine how it could provide a more representative and useful view of the market.
Angus Reid brought its research consulting expertise, and proprietary audience of verified people to the work. Together with Washington’s Lottery and its advertising agency, the team reviewed the survey question by question, identifying duplication, outdated topics and measures that were no longer informing business decisions.
That process reduced the tracker from 28 minutes to 10 minutes while maintaining continuous fielding with 900 Washington residents per quarter, or approximately 300 per month. The tracker also became more flexible, allowing questions to be added for specific business needs and removed later, with some measures fielded quarterly or annually rather than every month.
Results
The shorter tracker brought more casual players and non-players into the research, giving Washington’s Lottery a more representative view of the market.
Comparing the two years before and after the change, the research found:
- Past-year play moved from 65% to 58%.
- Past-month play moved from 49% to 37%.
- Heavy players declined from 75% of the sample to approximately two-thirds.
- Past-month participation began tracking changes in jackpots, rising as jackpots increased and falling as they declined.
The new data also revealed lower positive opinion of Washington’s Lottery and lower awareness of where lottery proceeds go, leading to follow-up research and changes to messaging and placement. Washington’s Lottery has since seen key measures begin to increase, while the streamlined tracker is being used more widely across the organization.
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