PROVIDENCE – GTECH Corp.’s 10-year, $20 million per year contract with the Kansas Lottery is not at risk, despite last week’s computer error, according to a Milan-based spokesman for parent company Lottomatica SpA, Interactive Investor reported today. The same cannot be said, however, of the seven- to 10-year, $2 million contract tentatively awarded in April to GTECH’s Spielo division to oversee electronic gaming at Kansas’ state casinos.
GTECH systems reported incorrect winning numbers in the Kansas Pick 3 daily drawings on three days in a row: June 29 and 30 and July 1. The errors were spotted on July 2 by the Kansas Lottery – but by then, some winners may have already discarded their tickets, lottery executives said last week in disclosing the errors.
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The Kansas Lottery said it would honor the 136 tickets bearing numbers mistakenly reported as winners, as well as the 169 winning tickets. It planned to seek $20,730 in compensation from GTECH to cover payouts on the incorrect numbers – a bill the Lottomatica spokesman reportedly said GTECH will pay.
The error also may cost GTECH a data-management contract for Kansas’ four state-owned casinos, Ed Van Petten, executive director of the Topeka-based Kansas Lottery, told The Kansas City Star earlier this week. Talks with GTECH were “at a standstill,” Van Petten said. “We are not going to move forward until they can establish some degree of credibility.”
The $2 million, seven- to 10-year casino contract – for which GTECH’s Spielo division previously had been favored over rival bidder Scientific Games Corp. (READ MORE) – is subject to approval by the Kansas Lottery Commission and the state Information Technology Office.
“We believe we will shortly resolve these issues that have come up with Pick 3,” GTECH spokesman Bob Vincent told the Star. “We are very confident we can do that to the satisfaction of the [Kansas] Lottery and renew our discussions with the Lottery about the gaming contract.”
He described the Pick 3 program as “a software glitch that happened. It should have been caught, and it shouldn’t have happened.”
GTECH Corp., a wholly owned subsidiary of Lottomatica SpA, has provided lottery technology and services to the R.I. Lottery since 1978. Lottomatica is a $1.7 billion gaming technology, services and lottery operations company with 6,000 employees in more than 50 countries. More information is available at www.gtech.com or www.GruppoLottomatica.it/eng.
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