Lottoland have confronted the ban in Australia on their lottery betting from January 1, 2019, launching jackpot betting on financial market results.
This looks and feels like a move to get around the ban. Following a complaint, ASIC is considering an investigation, as reported by The Sydney Morning Herald. ASIC is one of several bodies looking at what Lottoland is doing.
The Herald understands the complaint, lodged on Friday, suggest Lottoland may be offering a financial service through the “jackpot betting” product.
Sources with knowledge of the complaint said it raised concerns that by using financial market data to create a lottery draw, Lottoland may be making a market for its own over-the-counter products.
Other industry sources told the Herald if Lottoland was using financial markets to simply generate a string of random numbers to determine a win, which would not be a financial service, this could instead leave it in breach of the Interactive Gambling Act.
However, Lottoland chief executive Luke Brill said “jackpot betting” was just the start of a series of new products the company expected to bring to the market this year.
I can’t see how this will end well for Lottoland given the 9investment by politicians already. However, the people at Lottoland have plenty i nested in Australia so it should have been anticipated by the politicians and those who wrote the legislation that they would look for ways around it.
What is interesting with this latest financial market product is that it is based on the financial markets, including the US. If you try and access Lottoland in the US you see this:
While the bigger challenges for newsagents are the migration of lottery purchases online as well as diversification in easy to access gambling products, Lottoland will draw more attention as it is an understood and unifying target for retailers, and because it launched in Australia with a campaign mocking newsagents.
It is unfortunate that stage based VANA and NANA newsagent associations backed Lottoland last year in the organisation’s fight to offer its lottery betting products.
ALNA has engaged on the latest moved by Lottoland. Read here.
Mark,
NANA support was a principle support for an online product that gave Agents a commission on online sales.
TATTS had, up to that time, dismissed out of hand, any discussion of on line commissions.
NANA did not receive any ‘promotional’ money from TATTS or from LOTTOLAND.
Other have – you do the sums
It would be interesting to know exactly how much ALNA have been paid by Tatts. I haven’t seen them publicly declare what the payoff has been.
Peter,
you will need a solid chair when you find out.
it might even knock your socks off as well.