In Victoria this is shocker to newsagents. When I heard it, I was stunned. I then listened to Tattersall’s spokesperson saying it is going to have little effect on them as scratchies are only about 15% of their lottery sales and would have on the “bottom line (profit), probably no impact.” Well the market does not agree with that figure as their share price has dropped about 12% in the past few days.
What I also thought was interesting was the announcement by Tattersall’s also stated that "dedicated Tattersall’s points of sale within their shops and specialist lottery outlets, including kiosks in shopping areas, will continue to sell only Tattersall’s lottery products.“ Note the word only I have added the emphasis too. Are they planning to stop these areas from selling Intralot’s instant tickets? So the customers there with some spare cash, the newsagent is not going to be able to sell them instants there!
Clearly the dynamics of an old proven market will change as a new major player with new philosophies and ideas has come into it. We know that they Intralot state that they plan to have about a 1000 retail outlets by moving into supermarkets, service stations and other shops. They don’t even talk about newsagents. If Victorian newsagents get some of this share, it will not be much.
Also what I found interesting was a further announcement by Intralot that states it won “a 10 year license to operate a variety of lottery and instant games in Victoria” so I wonder what the “variety of lottery” means? Will instants tickets change too?
Anyway I quickly decided to test how it is going to affect my clients - newsagents. Quickly looking at some databases my figures are that many newsagents are looking at losing about 25% of their total lottery sales. It is hardly trivial!
It will be interesting to see what the ANF and VANA has to say about all of this?
