Lottomatica Eyes US Privatizations

9 January 2007

Fresh off winning 1,600-plus gambling licenses as well as acquiring Internet and interactive channels, Lottomatica S.p.A is eying U.S. lottery properties.

Marco Sala, managing director and general manager of Lottomatica Italian Operations told the daily Il Sole 24 Ore that he is closely following U.S. states--such as Indiana, New Jersey and Illinois--where lottery privatizations could take place in the near future. The company previously showed serious interest in the forthcoming privatization of the U.K. National Lottery and Milli Piyango, the national lottery of Turkey.

Lottomatica S.p.A. is one of the world's largest commercial lottery operators and a market leader in the Italian gaming industry.

GTECH and Lottomatica together create a fully integrated lottery operator and gaming technology solutions provider--a combined company with worldwide scale, considerable financial strength and industry-leading customer solutions.

Lottomatica is publicly traded on the Italian Stock Exchange and has more than $1.8 billion in revenue and 6,000 employees in over 50 countries.

GTECH and Lottomatica operate under Gruppo Lottomatica, which is majority owned by the De Agostini Group, a century-old publishing, media and financial services company.




Rob van der Gaast has a background in sports journalism. He worked for over seven years as the head of sports for Dutch National Radio and has developed new concepts for the TV and the gambling industry. Now he operates from Istanbul as an independent gambling research analyst. He specializes in European gambling matters and in privatizations of gambling operators. Rob has contributed to IGN since Jul 09, 2001.