The Lott is changing their commission structures, the following organisations
• Australian Lottery and Newsagents Association
• Lotteries Retailers Associations (LRA)
• The Victorian Associations for Newsagents (VANA)
are now busy explaining to their members what is happening.
The best one explanation, I thought was the one done by tatts and distributed by VANA
Retailer_Information_Pack_Tatts
I would suggest if you want to know what is happening, have a look at this one. This is the one I am going to quote here by pages.
Here are some more documents that have been released
Explaining-the-new-retailer-model-for-ALNA-members_FINAL.pdf
New-model-for-lottery-retailers_12-March-2019.pdf
New_model_for_the_Lott_12_March_2019_FINAL.03.pdf
So here are my thoughts, on the first reading, it is clear that lotto sees a tremendous future online
Here is there retail only customer vs a retail and digital customer chart.
That is a big increase alright.
The new commission structure is to help this movement by rewarding the agent for helping this move.
What is not explained is what is the effect on the retail agent shop sales as the Retail Registered account becomes a Registered & Digital Account? Does it based on current figures goes up or down? It is not stated. This would be my first question! It is an important question as almost all of the commission increase is in shop sales and the figures supplied assumed in the Tatts and ALNA documents that it is as in 2018, something I am not sure it will not be.
Now it clearly does have some immediate positives, e.g. the DigiPOS fee will be removed, and for those that have brought it, that money will be refunded, but it does have some negatives, e.g. the player card commission is gone. Overall it did appear to give the agent more in fees. According to the ALNA figures, an agent doing $22,000 a week in sales can look forward to $220/week extra profit based on the financial year 2018 figures.
Reading further however it that it works on cycles which are about 17 weeks. What an agent needs to do is every cycle is to carry out a lot of new conditions to get the increase in commissions. This increase is not automatic. Most of these new conditions are reasonable and I think fair and I do not see them being a problem. I would agree that it is the responsibility of a Lotto agent to keep up to date with what is happening and to inform Tatts of what is happening.
Some, however, seem harsh, for example, if accidentally in your nominated account one time it does not quite have enough money for settlement which can happen, then you have blown your increase in commissions this cycle. Better luck next cycle.
Another condition is very puzzling listed on page 8 and which I have no idea of how hard or easy it is to do, here it is and I will let you decide.
Now 1% in a stable established market is not easy to get. Worse if you are an agency in a tourist or sporting area, where you have almost no control over your players so I would not be surprised if some agents go up and down on this figure every cycle. Maybe an agency should make a rule only registered players can buy in this agency.
Lastly, on page 14, I would like to see the calculation sheets on how these were derived. I cannot get all these figures, so I am not sure what they are telling me.
You have my thoughts overall, I will say that I am not against it, but I do have concerns.
