I remember years ago, going to a government meeting where the public servants stated their concerns that in international terms, many overseas lotteries had better returns and more massive payouts then Australian gambling offers and that Australian would slowly go online and they were apprehensive over the loss of revenue. Well, here the government is still worried and thinking of banning lottoland.
Now suddenly here lottoland which never seems to have cared for newsagents suddenly care. They have now made an offer of 20% of the profits to newsagents. What precisely that means in real terms, no one I have spoken to is sure. However considering that lottoland are looking at getting banned and losing much of Australian business, it probably would be a genuine offer, and that could be very attractive to many newsagents many who are not getting much margin now and to those that do not have lotto. I am sure just like we do with gift cards and telco products in our point of sale software, print a valid lotto ticket.
The long-term question remains of how effective will this ban be. What is to stop me as an Australian, going online and betting on a service like lottoland if the ban took effect? Australians are now big online gamblers, so the long-term problem of Australian lotto remains.
