5th April, 2018 – The controversial online lottery outlet Lottoland Australia has made a final pitch to offer newsagents a 20 per cent commission, in a desperate attempt to win support as a ban on its product closes in.
Luke Brill, chief executive of Lottoland Australia, said he wanted to partner with newsagents to provide customers with greater choice, in a way that he said would be fair and profitable for newsagents.
“Lottoland does not offer bets on Australian lotteries but only on overseas lotteries, which means we do not compete directly with newsagents,” he said.
The Gibraltar-headquartered company announced today that it had offered the 4,000 news and lottery agents across Australia a profit-sharing agreement, which Mr Brill argued, if accepted, would ensure wider choice for customers and additional revenue for newsagents.
The offer would see newsagents receive 20 per cent of profits generated from every bet on overseas lotteries that they referred to the NT-licensed Lottoland, which the company said could be worth thousands of additional dollars a month to individual newsagents.
In an open letter to newsagents published in newspapers today, Mr Brill said that in discussions with the association that represented newsagents last year, he had made an offer to share revenue from secondary lottery betting with newsagents. He said the latest offer improved on that original proposal.
Mr Brill added that a recent proposal by the Federal Government to effectively ban online lottery betting would not help newsagents, arguing that it would manifest Tatts’ monopoly through its parent company, Tabcorp.
The Turnbull government introduced legislation late last month that would ban betting on lotteries and keno games, which are known as “synthetic” lotteries. Communications Minister Mitch Fifield is confident the law will pass the Senate soon after the May budget.
“The challenging times faced by many newsagents relates in part to technology and in part to the way Tatts continues to push the digital sale of its products on their own website, taking revenue away from the newsagents,” Mr Brill said.
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Originally published by The Australian.