Ohio Lottery may give $10 million contract to Greek company

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By Laura A. Bischoff, Staff Writer Updated 11:26 PM Saturday, July 25, 2009

CLEVELAND — The Greek company that won a bitterly contested $200 million computer contract from the Ohio Lottery could land another potentially lucrative lottery contract, this time without competitive bidding.

Intralot, a global company based in Greece, recently beat out GTECH Corporation of Rhode Island to run the Ohio Lottery’s gaming system. The contract is worth $200 million over 10 years.

Ohio Lottery Director Mike Dolan confirmed last week that he is considering asking Intralot to also run a computer system that would track more than $2 billion in slot machine transactions.

GTECH estimates the contract may be worth $10 million to $23 million a year, depending on its structure. “You ought to be bidding out something this large,” said GTECH Senior Vice President Bob Vincent.

The Strickland administration is counting on 17,500 video lottery terminals, or slot machines, to start operating and generating cash for Ohio by May 2010.

Vincent said the compressed schedule still leaves time to put the multimillion job out for bid.

“We think the state would benefit from a competitive procurement, which has been the case in almost all the other states,” said Vincent. A contract fight would be just another complication in Ohio’s high-speed, high-stakes push to bring slot machines to the state. Opponents have already filed a lawsuit to block slots and more legal challenges are promised.

Dolan said having Intralot run the lottery and another vendor operate the slot machine system isn’t out of the question but it’ll come down to what’s in the best interest of Ohio and the expeditious timetable.

State Rep. Jay Hottinger, R-Newark, said without a bid “you never have an assurance that you’re getting a fair deal at a fair price.”

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