Wheel of Fortune Spins for Jack Ford, Partner in Lottery Kiosks

Two San Diego political figures--one a Republican and the other a Democrat--have joined forces in a partnership that has nearly cornered the market on the lucrative business of selling California Lottery tickets at regional shopping malls.

Jack Ford, son of former President Gerald R. Ford, and Byron Georgiou, once a top aide to former Gov. Edmund G. Brown Jr., are the principals in California Infoplace, a 3-year-old concern that sells the lottery tickets out of information booths at shopping centers across the state.

The firm has sold more than 24 million lottery tickets since 1985, state records show. The 5-cent-a-ticket commission paid by the lottery means Ford and Georgiou have grossed more than $1.2 million during that period.

Just the Tip of the Business, Pair Say

But lottery tickets, the pair say, are only the base of the business, which also profits from the sale of transit passes and sports and entertainment tickets, the rental of baby strollers and wheelchairs, and the provision of information on behalf of the malls’ retailers.

Cal Info, as the business is known, has 27 locations in California, including seven in San Diego County malls: Mission Valley, University Towne Centre, Plaza Bonita, Grossmont Center, Parkway Plaza, Plaza Camino Real, and North County Fair.

The firm’s newest location opened in the Sacramento area last week.

Bob Taylor, a spokesman for the lottery, said Cal Info is one of the state’s more productive purveyors of the computerized Lotto tickets, a game in which gamblers pay $1 dollar for six numbers they hope will match the six picked by lottery officials each Wednesday and Saturday. The shopping center kiosks produce more sales on average--almost 10,000 tickets a week--than any other kind of lotto location, including liquor stores, supermarkets and convenience stores.

Only three shopping centers in the state have lottery kiosks run by someone other than Cal Info.

“They are strong promoters of the lottery,” Taylor said of Cal Info. “They’re a key account of ours.”

Met While on Del Mar Fair Board

Ford, 36, and Georgiou, 40, met when they were both serving as members of the Del Mar Fair Board, which runs the fairgrounds and serves as landlord for the Del Mar Thoroughbred Club, operator of the annual horse-racing meet. Both live in Encinitas.

Georgiou is a lawyer who was Gov. Brown’s legal affairs secretary and then became Brown’s final appointment to the Fair Board in 1982. Ford, who has dabbled in publishing and political consulting, was Gov. George Deukmejian’s first appointment to the board in 1983. Georgiou’s term ended in 1986; Ford remains on the panel today.

Ford, a Republican, has considered running for political office--anything from Congress to state controller--and still thinks of public life as an option, though he has become increasingly guarded regarding his privacy in recent years.

Georgiou is a behind-the-scenes mover in Democratic Party circles who, like Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis, is a Greek-American graduate of Harvard Law School. Georgiou has known Dukakis for several years and was a delegate for the governor at the Democratic Convention in Atlanta last month.

“We’re pretty close,” Georgiou said of him and Ford. “We enjoy each other’s company. We cooperated on a fair number of projects before this--all independent of our politics.”

Ford said he and Georgiou got into the lottery business when “friends of friends” arranged a 1985 meeting with Glen Strike, president of Toronto-based Infoplace, which sells lottery tickets at 100 regional shopping centers across Canada.

Strike became a minority partner in Cal Info and serves on the company’s board of directors. But Ford, as president of the company and the one with the largest financial stake, runs the business on a day-to-day basis, dealing with the shopping centers and with the lottery commission, which completed a background and security check on him before allowing him to open up shop.

Strike, who is considered a pioneer in the field, declined to be interviewed by The Times. He said he “shuns publicity” for fear that it might harm his “close relationship” with the shopping-center developers who are his lifeblood.

Although all of the mall kiosks operated by Cal Info sell lottery tickets, Ford and Georgiou downplayed the role the gambling business plays in their enterprise. They said the service provided to the malls is more important. State law requires that any outlet selling lottery tickets also be a legitimate business selling other items.

“All of our revenue sources are important to us,” Georgiou said. “But no one revenue source is so critical that the concept couldn’t go forward without it.”

Indeed, several mall operators who have arrangements with Cal Info said they have come to rely on the company to do everything from answering telephones to renting baby strollers. Often, the kiosks provide services that would not exist or, if they did, would be a burden on the center managers.

Separate Arrangements

Although the company has separate arrangements with each mall or mall chain, in many cases Cal Info operates rent-free and pays only a percentage of its sales to the center after a certain profit level has been reached.

“They have the right to sell lottery tickets in exchange for the services they render,” said James Braun, regional director of center management for May Centers Inc., which operates five malls in San Diego County. “We are pleased with the arrangement.”

Mark Ashton, general manager of University Towne Centre, said he was not immediately sold on the lottery idea when Ford proposed it to him. But now, he says, the relationship is working well.

“I had to be convinced,” Ashton said. “We make no secret about it, we are trying to project an upscale image as it relates to merchandising and the type of customer we’re trying to attract. We want to provide goods and services that our customers are going to be happy with. The public’s perception of providing that use is one consideration.”

But Ashton said his customers apparently “appreciate having the ability to purchase these tickets.” The mall’s visitors have bought more than 281,000 tickets--about 3,500 a week--in the 18 months that the kiosk has been open.

Braun and Ashton said Ford’s status as the son of a former U.S. President was a curiosity that provided a topic of conversation, but had nothing to do with the company winning its contracts.

“Jack sold it on his own,” Ashton said.

Aggressive Sales Job

And, although Cal Info has a near monopoly on the lottery kiosks, the firm’s dominance in the field, by all accounts, rests not on the partners’ political clout so much as the aggressiveness with which they have sold the service. Georgiou said the pair hope to one day have 50 or more locations in California.

A woman who operates a lottery kiosk at Del Amo Fashion Center in Torrance, the nation’s largest shopping mall, said she and the kiosk owner have no desire to go head-to-head with Ford in a race for more sites. The Del Amo kiosk, which does not double as an information center, is the state’s single highest averaging lotto sales site, according to Taylor, the lottery spokesman.

“That’s fine if he (Ford) wants to go into all the other malls,” said Codelle Perez, who runs the Del Amo kiosk. “We don’t mind at all. We’ve got the one that counts.”