Through provincially operated Crown Corporations—government-owned entities structured to function like private commercial enterprises—Canadian provinces have been conducting and managing lottery programs for decades. These programs include national and local draw games, scratch tickets, land-based casinos, charitable bingos and raffles, and more recently, sports betting and online gaming. 

Nationally, the industry is thriving. Most of the generated revenue goes to essential provincial services such as healthcare and education, community programs and local economic development. They also have a strong emphasis on responsible gaming initiatives across the country.

BCLC: A Canadian leader in responsible gaming 

Founded in 1985, the British Columbia Lottery Corporation (BCLC) manages legal lottery and gaming products in British Columbia (BC). Through strategic partnerships, the corporation was able to expand beyond BC and into Manitoba and Saskatchewan.  

Running since 2009, its GameSense program offers information, advice and tools to help players manage their gambling habits. The program promotes transparency about game play, dispels common gambling myths and emphasizes setting time and money limits. Now a recognized model for responsible gambling, jurisdictions across North America are adopting GameSense for their own lottery and gaming platforms. 

Challenge: Growing competition and keeping players engaged

Provincial Crown corporations face increasing competition from unregulated offshore online gaming sites whose revenues do not contribute to provincial economic growth. This is a key challenge, not only because of the profit loss but also due to unlawful competitors not adhering to local player health standards. 

To mitigate these issues, provinces are looking for ways to encourage players to stay within regulated ecosystems. One approach they are adopting is the use of AI to provide personalized recommendations and enhanced player engagement that rigorously adhere to guidelines for responsible use.

To stay competitive while protecting players, BCLC began exploring ways to accelerate its enterprise capabilities through AI. We partnered with the corporation to develop AI strategies aimed at enhancing engagement, streamlining processes and bolstering security through production ready models. 

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  • Streamlined business processes, technology infrastructure and stakeholder engagement strategies  

 

  • Established fast, secure and centralized access to data 
     

Solution: Build better customer retention models

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AI implementation

Our collaboration with BCLC began with performing an in-depth analysis of their use cases and creating an AI roadmap and technical implementation plan. This roadmap led to the selection of a key use case centering on customer churn reduction. 

Furthermore, its potential to enhance player retention made it an ideal candidate for AI implementation—requiring a production-grade model with cross-platform integration between the cloud-based data warehouse, AI engine and CRM system. A core component of the project was the integration of our Responsible Use of AI Framework into the solution development to align best practices with an ethical and transparent deployment.

Results

By integrating our AI and ML models into BCLC’s CRM operations, they were able to: 

  • Reduce customer churn by  26% through a production-grade AI model that integrated into their CRM operations
  • Streamline business processes, technology infrastructure and stakeholder engagement strategies  
  • Establish fast, secure and centralized access to data 
  • Deliver continuously relevant and timely player communications
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