Following GTECH Corporation's recent acquisition of Creative Games International, a global leader of the instant lottery ticket industry, GTECH is once again busying themselves by participating in the North American Association of State and Provincial Lotteries Conference currently being held in Chicago, Illinois through tomorrow. Their latest product, which is being showcased, is called GameGuard(TM), and is designed to dispense instant lottery tickets without the need for retail labor.

Offering twenty different instant lottery games, GameGuard is designed to meet the needs of retailers seeking to offer instant lottery tickets without employing human labor to do so. The machine, which is relatively compact, is built to sit on a checkout counter and provide customers direct access to for purchasing lottery tickets. In addition to being brightly lit and attracting the attention of passers-by, GameGuard is theft proof. Ticket sale reports are entirely compatible with GTECH's former Altura terminals, thereby making it that much easier on accounting procedures.

GTECH is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Lottomatica, who evidently is taking advantage of the booming instant lottery ticket industry, considering that over 50% of lottery sales in the U.S. in 2005 were made from instant ticket machines. This amounted to $27 billion in sales for 2005, and is expected to hit $70 billion as a global industry by 2010.

Regarding Lottomatica's acquisition of Creative Games International (CGI), it is the first part of a business strategy to directly buy into the instant lottery ticket business, which is the fastest growing sector of the lottery industry. With GTECH's card printing capabilities and branded content coupled with the distribution channel that CGI brings to the table, Lottomatica will now have a direct line - from beginning to end - to do just that. As for CGI, company President, Michael Kozdras said that with new resources and capital resulting from the acquisition, CGI will have competitive access to new markets.