Thursday, November 16, 2006

UK lottery frenzy driven by greed

Demand for lottery tickets is growing ahead of a £120-million EuroMillions jackpot, with Londoners, especially in wealthy areas of the capital, among the keenest buyers.

"The top 10 retailers were based in four of the most affluent areas of London - the City, Canary Wharf, Mayfair and Kensington - indicating that well-heeled players all made sure that they were in with a chance of winning the big one," Camelot said in a statement. The figures belie the commonly held but unsubstantiated view that lotteries prey on the poor and exploit the uneducated.

They validate a belief held by some lottery directors, namely that greed is the primary motivation for lottery sales. "All our players are greedy bastards," said one European lottery chief at an industry function in Mexico earlier this year. "Our role as responsible operators is to deal with the guilt."

This series of EuroMillions rollovers has already generated over £25 million for the Good Causes, which will benefit communities across the length and breadth of the UK, and that figure is expected to top £35 million by the end of Friday this week.

Tuesday, November 14, 2006

What if state lotteries dared to dream?

State lottery monopolies are an anomaly, said Ho Kwon Ping, founder and Executive Chairman of The Banyan Tree Group, in his keynote address to the World Lottery Convention in Singapore this morning. Inevitably there is a price to pay for allowing an anomaly to persist – namely the constraints imposed on state lotteries to the diversification and cross-border expansion of their business.

But instead of resisting change as the rest of the world economy globalizes, what if state lottery organizations decided to be agents of global change themselves?

What if they negotiated a new social contract that gave them a bigger space for their operations? What if a process of international consolidation spurned a new generation of megalottery operators that could compete globally with casinos and online gambling sites?

Not only would these new global operators overcome the inefficiencies of the existing model. They would have all the pieces in place to emerge as vigorous players in global philanthropy – stronger than the Gates Foundation and Warren Buffet combined, and more powerful promoters by far of such global good causes as poverty reduction and the fight to save the planet.

Wednesday, November 01, 2006

Britain pushes for international framework

The British government held preliminary talks in Ascot with representatives of 30 countries to discuss the creation of an international framework for the regulation of online gambling, the International Herald Tribune reported on Tuesday. The United States stayed away. British officials believe regulation is better than prohibition and are trying to bring the offshore sites onshore, preferably to Britain. Sports minister Richard Caborn says the British policy is motivated by consumer protection, not tax revenue. The conference failed to agree on the text for a set of guidelines for regulators. But Mark Mendel, who is representing the bookmakers' interests in Antigua's dispute at the WTO, was confident a consensus on the good intentions could be reached within days.