Moving behind the bar at his Gatehouse Tavern, an Eastern Point Road fixture in Groton that’s been quenching the thirsts of Electric Boat shipyard workers for decades, Shawn Arsenault motions toward the wall opposite the one festooned with dart boards.     

“That’s where the screen’s going,” he said last week, indicating a spot near a NASCAR poster. “I think it’s going to be a winner for the state — and for us.”

Such is the promise of keno, the numbers game the Connecticut Lottery Corp.’s preparing to introduce at existing lottery-selling locations across Connecticut and at hundreds of bars and restaurants that have never sold lottery products.

When the state announced in October that it had reached keno revenue-sharing agreements with the gaming tribes — the Mashantucket Pequots and the Mohegans — lottery officials said they’d have keno up and running in six months.

And they’re sticking to it.

“We expect to start in late March or early April. Right on time,” Anne Noble, the lottery’s president and chief executive officer, said during a recent interview at lottery headquarters in Rocky Hill.

The lottery’s own printed material indicates keno’s “expected launch date” is April 5.

“Rhode Island and Massachusetts have it,” said Arsenault, whose tavern already sells lottery tickets. “I get a lot of guys in here from both states that play keno all the time. They’re surprised Connecticut’s never had it.

“It’s kind of a mesmerizing game,” he said. “We’re basically a pit stop. You have a beer while you’re waiting for the traffic to clear out. Keno will have the people saying longer.”

It’s not the first time the lottery has eyed a start-up date for keno. In June 2013, when the state legislature included the game in a spending plan approved at the last minute, keno's rollout was anticipated within a year.

But before the game was in place, lawmakers repealed it.

Last spring, a bill authorizing keno was raised anew, and the state budget adopted in June gave the lottery the go-ahead provided the Office of Policy and Management worked out agreements with the two tribes.

That took longer than expected, with the Mashantuckets and the Mohegans, respective owners of Foxwoods Resort Casino and Mohegan Sun, each agreeing once again to accept 12.5 percent of the gross operating revenue keno generates, just as they had two years earlier.

Foxwoods offers its own keno, while Mohegan Sun abandoned the game years ago.

Since the agreements were reached, the lottery has proceeded with keno preparations that include Scientific Games’ development of keno software for lottery terminals, the adoption of game rules, the hiring of additional staff, the finalizing of marketing plans and the recruitment, licensing and training of retailers.

The lottery’s roughly 2,800 existing retailers — gas stations, convenience stores, package stores and the like — will automatically become keno vendors, their terminals modified to dispense keno tickets along with all other lottery products, Noble said.

In addition, the lottery hopes eventually to add as many as 600 new retailers, most of them bars and restaurants.

“We’re very pleased with our recruiting efforts,” Noble said. “We knew from the experience in other states that direct mail was the most effective way. When we launch in April, we’ll have from 200 to 400 new retailers. ... We get applications every day.”

The lottery first worked northward from the middle of the state, then southward and then east and west, reaching out to potential keno vendors by phone and in person as well as through the mail.

Coffee shops and delicatessens that feature seating areas are also among potential sites.

“Keno is best sold in bars and restaurants because it’s a social game — wherever people get together and are talking to one another,” Noble said.

Hundreds of sites will be equipped with TV screens that will display the winning numbers every four minutes.

The state will have to wait a while to realize the benefit of keno.

The game’s not expected to generate revenue for the General Fund in the fiscal year that ends June 30 “due to start-up capital and marketing costs,” according to Gian-Carl Casa, the Office of Policy and Management’s undersecretary for legislative affairs.

It’s estimated that in fiscal 2017 keno will provide the state with $12.8 million, Casa said.

The tribes, which stand to get 25 percent of keno ticket sales less prizes paid out to players but before other expenses, will get an estimated $6.2 million.

Without keno, the lottery returned $319.7 million to the state in fiscal 2015, the sixth straight year in which it contributed more than it had the year before.

In each of the last three fiscal years, the lottery’s payment to the General Fund has exceeded that of the two casinos, which contributed $268 million in fiscal 2015.

Lottery officials point to keno’s upward trajectory in other states.

“Keno will boost sales, broaden our customer base, increase the number of retailers and ultimately help to ensure consistent or growing General Fund returns, as it has elsewhere,” Noble said last spring while testifying before the General Assembly’s Finance, Revenue and Bonding Committee.

She predicted keno sales eventually would eclipse sales of the lottery’s biggest game, Powerball.

A Scientific Games executive testified that the Oregon Lottery became the first U.S. lottery to offer keno in 1991.

The game is now offered by more than a dozen state lotteries, including those in Rhode Island, Massachusetts and New York, all three of which introduced it in the early 1990s.

From fiscal 2010 to fiscal 2014, U.S. lottery keno-style games totaled $14.9 billion in sales and returned $3.7 billion to state coffers.

Retailers earned $96 million in commissions.

"We're ready," Arsenault said.

b.hallenbeck@theday.com

Twitter: @bjhallenbeck

How keno works

Players obtain a Quick Pick ticket or fill out a play slip, choosing up to 10 numbers, or “spots,” from an 80-number field per game.

Players can place bets of $1, $2, $3, $4, $5, $10 or $20 per game. The bigger the wager, the bigger the prize.

Numbers are randomly drawn every four minutes and displayed on TV screens at many lottery locations.

Players can scan their tickets at ticket checkers at all lottery locations, visit ctlottery.org or use the official CT Lottery Mobile App to determine whether they’ve won.