Atlantic Lottery Corporation

The Atlantic Lottery Corporation (ALC) (French: Société des loteries de l'Atlantique), currently branded as simply Atlantic Lottery or Loto Atlantique, is a Canadian organization that operates lottery games in Atlantic Canada. It is owned jointly by the four Atlantic provincial governments: New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia and Newfoundland and Labrador. ALC's headquarters are located in Moncton, New Brunswick. Profits returned by ALC are distributed to the provinces for their general funds.

Atlantic Lottery Corporation
TypeCrown corporation
Founded1976
Headquarters922 Main Street
Moncton, New Brunswick
E1C 8W6
ProductsLotteries and Video Lottery Terminals
RevenueCA $ 336 million (2006)
Websitewww.alc.ca

History

The headquarters of ALC in downtown Moncton
The winners parking spots at the ALC headquarters in Moncton

ALC was founded in 1976, shortly after the founding of government lotteries elsewhere in Canada. While ALC's first games were only played on a regional basis, it quickly joined the Interprovincial Lottery Corporation, which offered national draws.

ALC has been seen by some as an innovator in lottery technology. In 1988, they became the first lottery organization in the world to print a bar code on all draw and scratch tickets, allowing for instant verification of a prize. In 1990, they introduced the first legal video lottery terminals in Canada. Another first in North America was the introduction of PlaySphere in 2004, which allowed users to play the lottery over the Internet.[1]

In 2007, Atlantic Lottery was named one of Canada's Top 100 Employers, as published in Maclean's magazine, the only provincial gaming authority to receive this honour.[2]

Since 1976, ALC has awarded more than $5.5 billion in prizes and paid out $5.9 billion in profits to its four shareholders.

Games and products

  • Draw Games:
    • Lotto 6/49 (national) — draws on Wednesdays and Saturdays
    • Lotto Max (national) — draws on Fridays (replaced Lotto Super 7 in September 2009)
    • Tag (a 6-digit number attached to other draw tickets)
    • Atlantic 49 (a regional draw played in conjunction with Lotto 6/49 that uses the same format) — top prize is always $1,000,000.
    • Pik 4 (a "mini-Keno" draw using the Lotto 6/49 numbers)
    • Keno Atlantic
    • Atlantic PayDay (a draw of 4 numbers out of 70 in which the top prize is an annuitized $500,000 paid out two weeks at a time)
    • Bucko (played three lines at a time with a possibility of combination wins) — Draws every day with a top prize of $20,000.
    • Shabam! ( a draw of five numbers out of 38, top prize of 15,000 drawn daily)
    • Salsa Bingo (a daily bingo draw, drawing 25 numbers out of 75 and a random number generator draws 25 winning numbers, draws every day with escalating jackpots — $10,000 minimum)
  • Sports betting:
  • Other conventional games:
  • Internet-based games:
    • PlaySphere (allows for draw games and sports betting to take place over the Internet)

Red Shores

In Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, ALC owns the Red Shores Racetrack and Casino at Charlottetown Driving Park (now called Charlottetown Driving Park Entertainment Centre) which includes harness racing, slot machines and poker tables and is located. It also runs Red Shores at Summerside Raceway in Summerside.

Major sponsorships

The ALC is a sponsor of the Atlantic Canadian Peter Gzowski Invitational golf tournament (also known as PGI) since 2002. PGI is a charitable event in support of increased literacy. Atlantic Lottery Corporation has supported the Canada Games virtually from the corporation's foundation.

The ALC also supported the 2009 ICF Canoe Sprint World Championships in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia.

References

  1. ALC, Accomplishments, accessed August 2, 2019
  2. "Reasons for Selection, 2007 Canada's Top 100 Employers". Archived from the original on 2012-07-31.

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