13 PUBLIC GAMING INTERNATIONAL • NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2022 to fully control how we prioritize initiatives and allocate our resources, which is a benefit. How does the demerger enhance your relationship with political stakeholders and the beneficiaries of lottery funding? Sue van der Merwe: Again, I think it is about focus. Both these areas are highly important to the future of our business in different ways. As I mentioned earlier, we’re licensed in seven jurisdictions in Australia (all states and territories excluding Western Australia) and it’s important that we work effectively with all governments. The demerger helps simplify working with government as the range of licenses, products and issues is narrower than when we were part of a bigger group, and of course retaining strong and productive relationships with governments that license us is very important to us. What is the scale of the funds generated by the Lottery Corporation that go to the governments? Sue van der Merwe: In FY22, our operations generated A$1.7bn for communities through taxes paid to governments. We also generated more than A$500m in commissions for our retail partners, many of which are small businesses. We also paid out more than A$4.9bn in prizes to customers. How does the demerger enhance your ability to serve and support your channel partners, mainly retailers? Sue van der Merwe: We did a lot of very valuable work with our retailers when we were part of the Tabcorp Group. This included working with retail stakeholders to develop a model that saw them share in revenue from digital sales, and benefit from this transition to digital that we see occurring across a range of areas. We’re very conscious of the importance of the retail channel. It gives us prominence and visibility and helps promote our products. And it remains our largest channel. The omni-channel model we’ve developed is very much about allowing customers to buy entries when, how and where they like. In many cases a customer will buy across a range of channels depending on their activities. I think that as a separately listed company, it gives us an even greater ability to retain that focus on our more than 7,000 retail outlets. As an example, we now have a Chief Channel Officer (Antony Moore) on our Executive Leadership Team. That’s important in terms of ensuring we support our channel partners and manage our network effectively. What will The Lottery Corporation do going forward that would likely not have been done before? Sue van der Merwe: We have much work to do in terms of bedding in the demerger and standing up our own operations in those areas where we are still on shared systems operating under transition service agreements. We’ve just launched our strategy, vision and purpose. Our vision is to be the world’s best lottery operator, and our purpose is to create positive impacts. In terms of new opportunities, we’ve said that we are interested in opportunities relating to new licenses, or enhancements to our existing licenses, but they have to stack up against our criteria. How are consumers in Australia responding to the new environment of higher inflation and interest rates? Automated Campaign Management Omni-Channel Lottery Tools Real Time Data & Extensive APIs Lottery • Casino Sports • Bingo Poker Personalized Experience for Retail Web & Mobile Digital Partner for Lotteries www.bedegaming.com Management 360o Player Account Continued on page 37
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