London/Munich, 28. January 2013 – In the gambling industry social media and networks as well as social gaming/gambling seem to be everywhere. No conference is without social media evangelists, no industry magazine without social gaming specials, … Therefore it’s time for an objective analysis of the relevance of social media/networks and their impact on state lotteries.

Actually, the Facebook pages of state lotteries are already very much old hat. Many lotteries began offering their products on Facebook as far back as 2008. Still, other lotteries are only just beginning to discover social networks as a relevant marketing channel, and several lotteries are still joining.

On the whole, 60% of the state lotteries operate an official Facebook page
In total, MECN analysed nearly 160 state lotteries and their official Facebook, Twitter, and/or YouTube pages. Some results were impressive, some astonishing:

• 60% of the lotteries have an official Facebook page – On the whole, 60% of the state lotteries operate an official Facebook (51% in 2012) page whereas 5% of the lotteries have „some kind“ of Facebook page that we could not identify as an „official“ page. Among those not having Facebook pages are many lotteries in Asia and Latin America as well as many German state lotteries.

• Nearly 50% of the lotteries have an official Twitter page/channel – When it comes to Twitter, 47% of the lotteries analysed have their own Twitter page/channel (39% in 2013), and 49% operate a YouTube page/channel (36% in 2012). Other networks, such as Google+, Pinterest, Flickr, … play only a negligible role, and only a small number of lotteries are using those networks.

Benchmarking of state lotteries‘ Facebook pages
Benchmarking Facebook pages of state lotteries is a painstaking, time-consuming, and complex undertaking posing many challenges. Among the most critical issues are the following: (1) Identifying the official Facebook page of the lottery; (2) as many Facebook pages of lotteries are restricted to a specific country, only local/resident analysts can access these pages; (3) and as Facebook Likes/fans, … can change quickly, the analyses have to be repeated fairly frequently.

Nevertheless, we want to present a few selected insights from our newest 2013/2014 Lottery Benchmarking Study:

• Average number of Likes – The average number of Likes/fans the Facebook pages of state lotteries attract is ca. 53,000 (October 2013) – an increase of ca. 140% compared to the figure of a year ago. The Facebook page of the U.K. National Lottery represents the best practice (same as in our 2012 analysis) and has by far the highest number of Likes/fans with nearly 513,000 in October 2013 (ca. 350,000 in October 2012).

• On average, 1.0% of a country’s Facebook users are „fans“ of the Facebook page(s) of their country’s lottery – To narrow down the analysis even more, we also analysed the number of Likes/fans in relation to the overall number of Facebook users. On average, 1.0% (0.85% a year before) of a country’s Facebook users are „fans“ of the Facebook page(s) of their country’s lottery; for most countries, that figure hovers around 0.5% (median). The Internet-savvy Icelanders seem to be especially keen on following their country’s lotteries: their two lotteries are both among the top five.

More insights to be found in MECN‘s new Lottery Benchmarking Study
The new 2013/2014 edition of MECN‘s Lottery Benchmarking Study includes many additional in-depth analyses of the social media activities (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube) of lotteries. Moreover, MECN has added several best practice case studies identifying potential success factors.

The study can be obtained at: http://www.lottery-benchmarking.mecn.net

Quelle: MEdia & Entertainment Consulting Network (MECN)