Resistance of Technology
A study released in July by Insight Statistical Consulting shows that many international lottery operators are still reluctant to embrace computer technology for lottery draws. Among the survey's respondents (members of the World Lottery Association and North American Association of State & Provincial Lotteries), there remains a strong preference for using a physical draw machine with balls over random number generators. The survey also found that 92 percent of operators conduct randomness tests on their data and that 80 percent still use a physical ball-and-machine system to draw numbers. Data was collected electronically during May using a Web survey. A total of 26 lotteries (15 percent of those contacted) responded.
England's Olympic Lottery Launches
Seven years to the day before the opening ceremonies of the 2012 Olympics in London, the organizing committee launched its first lottery game to help fund the event. The new scratch card is expected to raise £750 million (half of the £1.5 billion of lottery money going toward the games' estimated cost of £2.4 billion) by 2012. Olympics Minister Tessa Jowell said the game was launched well in advance of the Olympics to ensure there's enough time to raise the needed funds.
Betex Wins Chinese Contract
London-based Betex announced in July that it has been awarded a contract to operate the lottery in the southwest Chinese province of Guizhou. The company will receive 2 percent of the lottery's turnover, a portion that would have been worth £390,000 in 2004 and is projected by the company to be worth £480,000 this year. Gambling is not legal in China, but exceptions are made for state-run lotteries, and Betex says it's working toward landing similar contracts in other Chinese provinces.
Italy's Lotto Numbers Drop
The Italian National Lottery (Lottomatica SpA) says that receipts for its June 2005 lotto games fell nearly 400 million euro from their June 2004 levels. June 2005 receipts were 508 mullion euro, while 2004 receipts were 903 million euro. Prizes paid out in June '04 totaled 228 million euro.
Lotto Game Could Return to Greece
Greece's finance minister confirmed in July that he's contemplating bringing back Xysto, a popular lottery game suspended in 2003 after negotiations to extend its operating contract were stalled. The operation of the Xysto scratch card under a revamped state lottery operator is calculated to bring in an extra $113.5 million a year, according to government officials. Additionally, the government recently began a procedure to sell up to 16.44 percent of the organization of football pools (OPAP), one of Greece's few profitable state-run companies.
GTECH to Provide On-line Lottery Technology in Thailand
Rhode Island-based GTECH Holdings Corporation have announced a new joint venture that will result in the company providing equipment and services for the next five years for the on-line national lottery of Thailand. Loxley Public Company Limited, a leading trading and telecommunications conglomerate in Thailand, holds a 51 percent equity stake in the joint venture. GTECH will supply a turnkey system, consisting of its Enterprise Series solution to the Government Lottery Office of Thailand. The company expects to generate approximately $35 million in product sale revenue.
Probe Urged in India
Members of the Tripura Opposition are trying to convince officials in other Indian states to launch an inquiry into the alleged irregularities of an online lottery. Ratanlal Nath, leader of the opposition, wrote to the chief ministers of Sikkim, West Bengal, Punjab, Maharashtra and Goa, urging them to order investigations into the corrupt practices of Videocon International, the company that organized the online lottery. Nath said in his letters that even after 512 draws, "results are being changed arbitrarily by the Videocon International before putting them on the Web sites." He added that prizes were being given to fake winners so that the company would have to spend very little on prizes and retain the rest of the sales proceeds.