ALL SYSTEMS ARE GO: Lottery board completes work necessary for launch
NASHVILLE (AP) — Board members of the Tennessee Education Lottery Corp. on Saturday completed the last of the work required of them before Tuesday’s launch of the games by approving several critical contracts.
Board members voted unanimously to finalize contracts between the two businesses that will create and run the lottery for Tennessee. GTECH Corp. will oversee the online games — the pingpong ball drawings of numbers that offer the biggest prizes — while Scientific Games will run the scratch-off ticket side.
‘We’re in good shape,’ lottery chief Rebecca Paul said. ‘We’ll be ready to rock ‘n’ roll on Tuesday.’
Tickets for the first four scratch-off games go on sale at 12:01 a.m. local time Tuesday, with proceeds going to college scholarships for qualifying Tennessee students. Any extra money will be spent on prekindergarten programs and K-12 building projects.
Online games are expected to begin by March, and Tennessee likely will join a multistate game like Mega Millions or Powerball by summer.
Board members also gave their final approval to the lottery’s advertising contract with Nashville-based Gish, Sherwood & Friends, and voted to allow members of the games’ executive staff to execute wire transfers.
‘I’m very confident we’ve got the checks and balances in place, the controls there to make sure everything is executed properly,’ board member Claire Tucker told her colleagues.
While the work required of the board is now complete, Paul and the lottery’s other executives still have much to do in the three days before tickets go on sale.
On Saturday, employees for the games’ district offices were receiving training at the lottery’s Nashville headquarters, and workers continued to set up and install lottery equipment at businesses approved to sell tickets.
Training of those retailers also was expected to continue across the state at least through the weekend.
The lottery has already met its goal of 3,000 approved retailers by the games’ launch. As of Saturday’s meeting, 3,300 merchants had received the necessary equipment and were awaiting Monday’s delivery of the lottery tickets, Paul said.
‘We’re really calm, everything’s in place,’ Paul said. ‘… We’ve still got a lot of work to do, but it’s coming together.’
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On the Net:
Tennessee Lottery, www.tnlottery.com