The Polish National Lottery, Totalizator Sportowy (TS), has after three consecutive unsuccessful attempts, found a new general manager. Jacek Kalida has been the official security advisor to TS since June 2006. He is a so-called "political commissioner" placed in the state-controlled company.
The new man at the helm faces the very difficult tasks of regaining customer trust and reversing a fast negative sliding spiral in sales caused by the bad management, corruption, politic influences and the decrease of lottery tickets sales.
GTECH has been a partner to TS for years, and the two groups will have an opportunity to return to their agreements.
In the meantime, planned changes to the Polish Gaming Act, according to Polish daily newspaper Dziennik, would let the monopoly, and perhaps other companies with offline concessions, to have their activities online. Politicians of the ruling party, Prawo I Sprawiedliwosc (Law and Justice), however, have denied it flatly.
The main foreign players in Poland--Betsson, SportingBet, Bwin and Expek--will get some head wind in the form of anti-gambling advertisement law, which doesn't include TS; the brand awareness of the TS brand and its sub brands; the regional know-how; government support, which is due to the fact that TS is an important taxpayer and sponsor for government events; or even politic party campaigns.
Tomasz Piotrowski, Betsson Poland's country manager, is still very enthusiastic about future developments.
"Betsson is getting stronger and stronger everyday on the Polish market with a calculated 20 percent of the online market and is still growing every day," Piotrowski said. "We are not afraid for the future."
He added, "Their (TS) management skills won't allow them to have too big a market share, though it might be a high number if they start early enough (before the people will have been educated by online companies).
"Please remember that the ruling party, Law and Justice, is in power and is trying to find and destroy any corruption or strange activities in all the state-owned companies. This might anytime also hit TS."
Poland steadfastly pursued a policy of economic liberalization throughout the 1990s with mixed results. The privatization of small and medium state-owned companies and a liberal law on establishing new firms have encouraged the development of the private business sector, which has been the main drive for Poland's economic growth.
Poland's population: 38 million.