New RMI Portal: What’s Inside?

Putting critical retail data & insights in easy reach for RMI users

By Brightstar Lottery

Published May 19, 2026

With retail sales still the cornerstone of lottery growth and sustainability, maintaining focus on the channel is an industry priority. This is underscored by the recent reactivation of the NASPL Retail Modernization Committee, which serves as a primary point of contact between NASPL and the retail community on matters of industrywide importance. The committee’s work has included 21-day settlement and the development of a standard Application Programming Interface (API) in support of in-lane sales. Under the new leadership of Alec Thomson, Executive Director of the Arizona Lottery, the Retail Modernization Committee will be focusing on enhancing scratcher sales via Ticket-By-Ticket Activation and retailer POS friendly inventory barcodes on tickets.

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Partners such as Brightstar Lottery also remain laser-focused on advancing retail. Brightstar invests heavily in developing innovative retail point-of-sale technology and self-service experiences to anticipate and align with the changing retail landscape. “We are dedicated to offering solutions that make the category easier to manage, monitor, and sell,” says Brightstar Lottery’s Paul Riley, Vice President Retail Innovation and Partnerships, who also heads the NASPL Standard API technical working group.

Among the unique tools Brightstar has developed to help monitor and grow the channel is the Retail Market Insights® (RMI) platform, a national database that provides lotteries and their retail partners with the lottery sales data to inform smarter, more confident decision making. With data from more than 166,000 U.S. retail locations, currently representing about 88% of national lottery sales, RMI gives lottery and retailer decision makers the tools to analyze lottery performance trends within and across jurisdictions.

Now access to RMI data and reports is easier than ever. Brightstar recently went live with an upgraded RMI user portal, redesigned to enable frequent content updates and greater ease of use.

“The new portal makes it much simpler and faster for RMI users to access the data and insights they need, when they need them,” says Tim Kriger, Brightstar Manager Retail Optimization.

Kriger, together with Richard Phillips, Brightstar Marketing Analyst, reimagined the portal from the ground up. “The RMI platform itself has grown and evolved so much since the legacy portal was built,” says Kriger. “Now the portal also serves the growing RMI user-group more readily.”

RMI data can be used to compare retailer and geographic attributes that impact sales performance, identify consumer trends, optimize existing lottery locations, and more. The new RMI user portal (pictured) makes accessing the data and reports easier than ever.

A Hero Upgrade: Reimagining the Portal

Previously, accessing RMI data reports was functional but less than ideal. The upgraded portal flips that experience. Today, there are no limits on the number of files or file types that can be shared with users. The new portal provides a secure, scalable way for Brightstar to deliver any RMI content to customers all in one place.

The portal is also fast, secure, and easy to access. RMI users simply log in with their email and password, and all their relevant content is immediately available – no dates to enter manually, no searching, no limitations on the number of workbooks that can be viewed together.

Jurisdiction-based access ensures users see only the content that applies to them: A user sees their specific performance workbooks as well as national views and applicable Consolidated Chain Reports, but not data from other states.

Just as importantly, “the portal supports a wide range of content that was previously difficult to share due to factors such as file size and firewalls,” notes Kriger. For example, large, data-rich files can now be downloaded by RMI users with a single click. These include the Interactive Tableau workbooks for state and national performance that allow users to explore data dynamically and filter by retailer or chain.

The workbooks can now be exported to Excel, PowerPoint, or even Word docs. Users can also download individual files or grab everything on their portal screen at once in a single, zipped package. 

What sounds simple represents a major shift. The new RMI Portal transforms how insights are delivered – making data easier to find, analyze, and act upon.  

Kriger, Phillips, and team also provide guidance and consulting to support lotteries with specific queries and data, whether one-off or on an ongoing basis. For instance, they have helped to automate some RMI-related reporting for users to replace repetitive manual work. At one lottery, a single employee was spending 15 to 20 hours each month manually reformatting a host of RMI reports for the lottery’s specific uses. “To eliminate that need, we replicated the employee’s process and automated it for him,” says Kriger. Those reports are now delivered automatically to the lottery through the RMI portal, saving significant staff time and making the information more immediately accessible.

The new portal will also allow ongoing evaluation of how users interact with it, to enable further enhancements. 

Both Kriger and Phillips are members of Brightstar’s dedicated Retail Path-to-Purchase Analytics and Optimization Team, which integrates lottery game specialists with retail analytics expertise. By analyzing multi-jurisdiction RMI data down to the terminal, game, and retailer level, the team is identifying ways to optimize lottery accessibility, visibility, and communication at retail.

RMI users can access the new portal at RMI.brightstarlottery.com. For more information or to join, contact your Brightstar general manager.

Tim Kriger serves as the product owner for RMI, overseeing report development, publication, and overall platform direction. In addition to managing new report creation and delivery, he works alongside Richard Phillips on user training and onboarding new jurisdictions, helping lotteries adopt and fully leverage the platform. His role bridges strategy and execution to ensure RMI continues to evolve in response to user needs.

Richard Phillips works closely with the RMI platform on a day-to-day basis, maintaining, updating, and expanding the monthly reports. His work includes enhancing the Consolidated Performance Reports by adding more state-level detail, enabling more meaningful comparisons and insights across jurisdictions. He also plays a central role in data normalization – ensuring data from dozens of jurisdictions is standardized to enable national and cross-jurisdictional insights.