Atlantic Lottery Corporation
 | |
| Company type | Crown corporation |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1976 |
| Headquarters | Moncton, New Brunswick |
| Products | Lotteries and Video Lottery Terminals. |
| Revenue | CA $ 336 million (2006) |
| Website | www.alc.ca |
The Atlantic Lottery Corporation (ALC) (French: Société des loteries de l'Atlantique), currently branded as simply Atlantic Lottery or Loto Atlantique, is an 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. All profits returned by ALC are distributed to the provinces for their general funds.
History
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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. The introduction of PlaySphere in 2004, they allowed users to play the lottery over the Internet, another first.
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.[1]
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 every Wednesday and Saturday
- Lotto Max (national) — draws every Friday (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 everyday with a top prize of $20,000.
- Shabam! ( a draw of five numbers out of 35, top prize of 15,000 drawn daily)
- Sports betting:
- Pro-Line
- Over-Under
- Props
- Pools
- Spreads
- Other conventional games:
- Scratch-n-Win (scratch tickets, including recurring draws such as Set For Life)
- Breakopen (Pull-tabs)
- Video lottery terminals
- Internet-based games:
- PlaySphere (allows for draw games and sports betting to take place over the Internet)
- GeoSweep (a draw game played by choosing a square or "geo" on a map of Atlantic Canada as your draw ticket. Guaranteed daily prize of $1000 and potential daily prize of $250,000)
ALC also owns the Red Shores Racetrack and Casino at Charlottetown Driving Park. The facility includes harness racing, slot machines and poker tables and is located in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island. It also runs Red Shores at Summerside Raceway in Summerside, Prince Edward Island.
Community involvement
The ALC is a sponsor of the Atlantic Canadian Peter Gzowski Invitational (also known as PGI) since 2002. PGI is an annual golf tournament to increase literacy.
Atlantic Lottery Corporation has supported the Canada Games for more than 30 years.
The ALC also supported the 2009 ICF Canoe Sprint World Championships in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia.