At the same time Lottoland wrote to ALNA offering what appears to be a commission to newsagents they engaged a PR campaign, giving the ALNA letter to journalists. It’s been reported in newspapers and online. Lottoland CEO Luke Brill says Newsagents are an important part of Australian communities… So important that newsagents were mocked by Lottoland.
If Lottoland were serious about mending bridges with newsagents they would make their pitch, apologise for the harm they wreaked on newsagents and their families, negotiate their offer and then talked publicly about it. Instead, Lottoland made a somewhat vague pitch and gave it to at least one journalist as the same time.
Lottoland needs to apologise, publicly. They should promote newsagents on TV in a national make-good campaign. They need to do this first, as a gesture of good faith, to remonstrate their their pitch today is genuine. Apologising and declaring they were wrong is the starting point.
Footnote: I remain firm in my view that online overall is the biggest challenge to newsagent lottery revenue. Here in Australia, the lion’s share of online is driven by Tatts. They are the newsagents competitor.
I’ll need to pull out my contract, but I suspect that Tatts have a no compete clause in there.
Yes. He suggests getting around it by only offering commission on overseas products, he says that is where most revenue is from Australian punters.