I think talking to people today and reading the communication going round that the ALNA took credibility beating today. The claim being made I believe from Calvin Ayre, but it could be Lottoland that the ALNA is in a severe financial problem (something I doubt) and that its claimed membership of 4,000 is 80% less. All this the ALNA has denied.
This has been picked up by quite a few gaming news sites. Game intelligence i-conseils SAS PlayerOne The daily payoff Some of these are claiming that the ALNA is lying.
For those that have not followed the dispute on membership, what happened is that Lottoland got financial documents from the Australian Securities and Investments Commission. When these were examined and then analysed by dividing the subscription revenue by the yearly member fee, they stated that ALNA has about 707 paid members., not 4,000 that the ALNA is claiming. The ALNA replied that it never claimed 4,000 but 2,000 business and then claimed that 4,000 such business exists.
From what I can see this looks what the ALNA did say although possibly Lottoland has some or perhaps many words spoken by representatives of the ALNA that do not make this distinction. I was thinking about this and for someone to make a claim honestly that they have about 2,000 members they need at least 1501 members, and then they can round up. Now the ALNA claims that it has 400 members in an affiliate group who are not specified and the ALNA represents them, so that leaves the ALNA needing 1101 members. The ALNA further claim that many of these members have more than one business and one unspecified has 58 businesses which if we are talking lotto is a sizeable organisation. Plus the ALNA claims the 707 figure is in error as many of its members do not pay the yearly fee claimed but less so one could say 800 or 900 plus some being multishop businesses it is possible that the 1101 member figure can be reached, thus making the 2,000 claim accurate in a strictly mathematical sense.
Overall I would say that both sides claims here are plausible, but I look forward to hearing more.
Finally that this dispute beside being nasty is unnecessary, I believe this is not a dispute between lottery franchisers and Lottoland but one between TABCORP, Lottoland and the federal government over a billion dollars a year of revenue.
