25 PUBLIC GAMING INTERNATIONAL • JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2024 informed by the experiences of countries across that diverse region. Indeed, the current managing director and CEO of the Lottery Corporation (Australia), Sue van der Merwe, also acts as chair of the Asia Pacific Lottery Association. Speaking about Australia specifically, Callum explained how its market is “very similar to the Canadian market. The Australian market consolidated beginning in 2007 so that today we effectively have two operators: the Lottery Corporation and Lotterywest. The Lottery Corporation operates the lotteries in seven out of Australia’s eight jurisdictions, with the state of Western Australia being the only jurisdiction that has a government-run lottery.” Callum also highlighted a key contrast between the Australian and American markets. “We’re very heavily draw-game focused: 90% draw games and 10% instant products, which is probably a playership mix that many people in the American market would find hard to believe. But Australia has a very rich history in draw games. When our big Powerball game gets up to a jackpot of $150 million, that creates a bit of lottery hysteria in Australia, with one-in-every-two adults buying a ticket, even though $150 million might sound like quite a small number for American lotteries which have enjoyed jackpot sizes much bigger than that.” With his dual role as the Chief Executive Officer of WestLotto (Germany) and Chairman of the Eurojackpot Cooperation, Andreas Kötter brought an informed perspective on the state of the gambling market in his home country and across Europe. “Germany is made up of 16 states and each has its own lottery company,” he said, “and what we are seeing in Germany is increasing liberalization as the market opens up to multiple operators acting worldwide, and we have a liberalized market for online sports betting, slot machines, and casinos”. Andreas highlighted how the lotteries in Germany's 16 states have “16 different sizes, 16 different IT projects etc. and therefore often different opinions, but we all share the need to fight illegals and we all face the same changing market”. He also highlighted the scale of the illegal gambling in Germany. “On average, around 25 % of lottery sales are generated through online channels, with meanwhile already around 40 % of total lottery-sales coming from legal resellers. On top of this, it is estimated that there are at least 3 to 4 million customers who take part in illegal lotteries in Germany alone. Most of these customers do not even know that they are playing illegally.” Speaking about the situation across Europe, Andreas informed about the networks that exist between different countries in Europe: “The European Lotteries is an association like WLA and NASPL, which represents 70 lotteries from 40 different countries, which is huge. That’s 40 different regulatory regimes, 40 different gaming cultures, 40 different game portfolios, etc. And we have two major product-based international cooperations in Europe, one of which is Eurojackpot which brings together 33 companies from 18 nations and the other one is EuroMillions which is offered in 10 countries. As the President of the World Lottery Association (WLA) and the longest-serving lottery CEO in the world, Rebecca Paul is well-qualified to speak about the importance of learning from colleagues internationally. She highlighted the great value that she had taken from similar sessions throughout her long career, which has included founding the lotteries of Florida, Georgia, and Tennessee. “In 1988, I had the opportunity to go to my first international conference. And I was blown away by how much you can learn from other parts of the world. Sometimes folks in the US think they're the best at everything, or that we do not have much to learn from others whose cultures and regulations are different from ours. And to be sure, there are things in the US that we're very, very good at. But there are folks in Germany and Morocco and Australia that are better at some things than we are. The diversity of perspectives they bring can stimulate fresh, new ways to think about things. The things that you can learn from colleagues around the globe are eye-opening.” ”For instance,” Rebecca explained, “some places in the world may not have had access to some of the newest technology. So, they compensated with ingenuity and creative solutions, like developing better marketing techniques and moving more quickly into mobile gaming. In some ways, more mature lotteries are learning from the strategies and methods originating in emerging lotteries. If you bring the best things from different countries together, you become better. Having the opportunity to learn from colleagues across the globe has been one of the most beneficial things for me in my career.” Rebecca highlighted opportunities to learn from colleagues internationally as one of the benefits of joining the WLA and encouraged anybody who was not already signed up to do so. Other benefits that she mentioned included the WLA’s certifications in responsible gaming, its reciprocal agreements to protect vulnerable communities, and its critically important security standards. Sarah then invited the panelists to talk about their approach to maximizing support for their beneficiaries. Callum explained the Australian model. “The vast majority of the funds our lotteries generate go back to the respective state governments. We pay A$1.8 billion in state taxes a year. We do try to augment that from our marketing funds and our own paying prizes to support a wide range of charities. But the vast majority of our money is channeled into state governments and ultimately services for the community such as hospitals.” In Germany, there are different models for distributing money to beneficiaries. Andreas discussed three. “One is to give money directly to good causes. The second is to set up a foundation and channel the money through it. The third is the one that we at WestLotto use: we give the money to the state government, but it is kept separate from the main budget, and the parliament votes on how it is allocated. So, we know exactly which beneficiaries get what funding, which allows us as a lottery company to really highlight good examples of how the money goes back into society”. The situation in Morocco was different again as Younes explained. All lotterygenerated funding there goes directly to “a specialist national fund for sports development to be spent by the Minister of Sports according to government policy.” Returning to the issue of illegal operators, Andreas stated that resellers are not necessarily illegal unless they are operating outside of their regulated market. In Germany, the closure of online markets Continued on page 42
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