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Under the leadership of Khalid Jones, in the 2025 financial year, the Virginia Lottery delivered a record sales of US$5.7 billion and contributed US$901 million to K–12 public education as a government agency that also acts as a regulator for a large part of the state’s gaming industry.
The fact that it was Jones’ first full year in the role – and in the organization – is impressive enough, with the former lawyer proving a strong fit for the role. Yet Jones isn’t cashing in his chips yet. Instead, he’s chasing growth in new markets: attracting younger and high-value audiences through the innovative use of technology and with a focus on responsible gaming.
This involves developing more experiential products and creating a more premium, luxury offering to draw in audiences that are completely different from its core market of customers for draw games, scratchers and online games.
“Going into the future, we will have to be very responsive to what non-legacy lottery players want,” Jones tells The CEO Magazine.
“We’re competing against a marketplace where we need to retain the interest of current players with current games, but the games of the future won’t look like the games of the present. So I’m putting a lot of emphasis right now on what 18- to 25-year-olds want.”
While the ultimate goal of entering the lottery is to win cash, Jones argues that younger audiences want more than just a basic transaction.
“There’s this idea in the lottery that players just want cash,” he says. “I think younger people are telling us that they want experiences, and they’re voting with their wallets in that way.
“We’ve got some very specific programs that we’re going to be unveiling to pull in high-powered partnerships.”
“I think younger people are telling us that they want experiences, and they’re voting with their wallets in that way.”
Jones also compares Virginia Lottery’s bid to attract a higher value, luxury audience to how car brands like Toyota and Nissan have successfully entered the luxury market, too.
“Back in the late 80s, Toyota, Nissan and others were seen as just reliable, safe, dependable vehicles – good vehicles, but not luxury,” he recalls.
“And they made efforts. Toyota released Lexus and Nissan released Infiniti. Those were their luxury lines. They kept that reliable, dependable core, but in going for a new market, they had a new marketing position and marketing opportunity, and they released products specifically for that.
“So there’s a luxury level of lottery, a version that speaks to a different audience that won’t look like the ones that we have now. We’ll have everything that we have currently because we have a core audience, but to evolve, we need to learn to be our own disruptor. And that’s what I’m working on right now.”
Such innovation will require a lot of legwork internally to harness data to better understand audiences, both existing and new. The organization’s AI pilot program, which Jones believes is going well and can be rolled out widely soon.
“When our team is doing audits, let’s say on sports betting or the casino audits, and we’re searching for anomalies, we’re going to be able to do a lot better with machine learning that can look at every single solitary bet, versus the spot checking that we often have to do. In general, it can help us make better decisions internally,” he says.
“We are also using AI in how we train people and their continuous learning. We’re deploying a version of AI through a system that we’re using called Five9, which is an automated assisted tool that helps our customer service team respond better to player queries.”
The most ambitious part of the Virginia Lottery’s AI strategy, Jones adds, lies in innovating to provide bespoke gaming experiences for the customers.
“I have an idea in my mind that we’re starting to kick into action, where we’ll actually allow players in real time to make their own games via AI,” he reveals.
“You’ll come onto our online platform. You’ll say, ‘I want the game to look like this. I want it to play like this. I want the icons to have a certain look. I want the background to be like this’. And in real time, with parameters based on the pricing of the game, you get a game created for you.
“I think that’s something that even three years ago would’ve sounded like a distant fantasy, whereas now, it really feels like we’re much closer to that. We’ve got great ambitions from a technological standpoint, but we’re going step by step. Our CTO is leading the charge on making sure that I can get to these things as quickly and responsibly as possible, under some of the mandates that we have.”
For Jones, future success will rely upon maintaining excellent relationships with partners, among them Brightstar Lottery, which runs Virginia Lottery’s retail gaming system.
He also notes that demonstrating leadership doesn’t just mean dictating from above, but walking a mile in employees’ shoes. It’s a work ethic he picked up from his grandfather, as he remembers fondly.
“My grandfather was someone who was extraordinarily influential in my life. I spent my summers in Queens, New York, where he lived. When I would ask my grandfather for some money, instead of giving it to me, he would make me collect cans and go turn them in at the local grocery store down the street, where you would get a nickel per can,” Jones says.
“I have a philosophy that if you’re not willing to do every job in the organization, then you don’t deserve to do any job in the organization.”
“It taught me something extraordinarily important about doing whatever it takes to get the things that you want to achieve, whether that’s just a couple of quarters to play a video game or achieving record sales for education. I always want to be seen as someone who’s willing to collect cans for whatever we need to do.”
Jones relates this back to the time he has spent on casino surveillance, as regulation requires the Virginia Lottery to have casino compliance representatives on the floor, as well as taking phone calls within the customer relations team.
“I have a philosophy that if you’re not willing to do every job in the organization, then you don’t deserve to do any job in the organization. And I try to live by that word indeed,” he concludes.
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