COLUMBUS, Ohio – The Ohio Lottery selected a new central gaming vendor Thursday who will work the machinery behind its billions in annual ticket sales, according to a spokesperson, a major change behind one of the biggest public contracts the state awards.
Light & Wonder (formerly Scientific Games), of Las Vegas, will take over Lottery operations June 30, 2027, according to Lottery spokeswoman Danielle Frizzi-Babb.
Exactly how much the contract is worth is unclear. Frizzi-Babb said only that it is based on a “percentage of sales,” but the Lottery’s prior vendor earned tens of millions of dollars over the last decade.
The decision amounts to a significant loss for Intralot, a Greek company that has operated Ohio’s lottery since 2008. Between 2014 and 2023, the Lottery paid Intralot more than $465 million for gaming services, equipment, cashless transaction management, and oversight of video lottery terminals (slot-like gaming machines), Frizzi-Babb said.
At the close of last year, Lottery officials said Intralot offered an “unsolicited” bid to extend its contract, which was rejected.
The Ohio Lottery functions as a state-owned gaming business. It’s financially self-sufficient and has generated tens of billions of dollars for Ohio’s schools since its launch in the 1970s, including $1.46 billion last year alone. But Ohio has joined a trend of states increasingly privatizing lottery operations with outside contractors.
According to Frizzi-Babb, all equipment will be upgraded and replaced when Scientific takes over.
This marks the second major loss of state business for Intralot this year. In June, the Lottery selected IGT, of London, for a separate, $47.7 million contract to run its video lottery terminals, a job previously done by Intralot. The contract entails ensuring only state-authorized software is uploaded onto the machines, tracking user behavior, and ensuring the games meet minimum payout requirements.
Last year, the Lottery received about $4.5 billion in ticket revenue and $1.4 billion more from video lottery terminal, according to a financial report. Intralot was paid $58 million for gaming services that same year, which included fees for both lottery and video lottery terminal services, according to Frizzi-Babb.
The selection ends a behind-the-scenes lobbying fight for a massive public contract. Three companies submitted bids: Intralot, Scientific Games, and IGT. Between the three were 22 registered executive branch lobbyists. That count doesn’t include Dennis Berg, a former director of the Ohio Lottery who testified to lawmakers this summer as a “consultant” for Intralot.
The new contract was awarded via competitive process that undervalued price compared to its predecessors. When Intralot first won the contract in 2008, pricing comprised 37.5% of the grading criteria. This time around, pricing was only 25% of the grading criteria. Frizzi-Babb, when asked for rationale behind the weighting change, said it was based on “current industry standards.”
Cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer reached out to both Intralot and Scientific Games for comment.
State Rep. Jay Edwards, an Athens Republican who led a study committee on gambling this year, previously asked Ohio Lottery Director Michelle Gillcrist to hold off putting out a request for proposals on a new vendor until she testified to his study committee. The Lottery issued its request regardless. While Gillcrist appeared at his committee, she declined to answer questions about Intralot given the open procurement process. Edwards called the lack of transparency “fishy.”
Since at least 2009 (as far back as online lobbying records go) Intralot was represented at the Statehouse by Neil Clark, known as one of the more powerful Republican lobbyists in Ohio until he was charged with racketeering in 2020 over his energy industry work. He died by suicide in 2021 before his trial.
In 2019, Intralot won a five-year, no-bid contract to run a brand new sports betting program in Washington, D.C. According to The Washington Post, the end product was marred by technical problems, poor odds compared to other states’ sportsbooks, and a bad reputation. Intralot, the district’s lottery chief told the newspaper earlier this year, proposed transferring the work to a subcontractor because “the platform they created just isn’t able to provide everything that our players are asking for.”
Edwards said he suspects it will be expensive to replace Intralot’s machines with new hardware. He said the Lottery is always bragging about its record profits, and he hasn’t heard any criticisms of the lottery, so he doesn’t understand what’s behind the shift.
Intralot will continue to oversee a small subset of about 800 sports gaming machines – comprising about 3% of Ohio’s relatively new sports betting market – in bars, bowling alleys and similar locations around the state.
Jake Zuckerman covers state politics and policy for Cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer.