Part 1 of a 3-Part Series
In the country where De Lotto lodged its successful legal crusade against foreign I-betting companies offering their services in the Netherlands, 391,000 economic units participated in foreign games of chance in 2004--a decrease of only 4.7 percent compared to the previous measurement in 2003.
The TNS-NIPO report, by order of the Dutch Gaming Board, was carried out for the fifth time in 2004, following previous measurements in 1996, 1998, 2000 and 2002. Due to the low percentage of participants in foreign games of chance among the Dutch population, the size of the net random sample survey was small in a number of cases. (In 2004, the sample size was 214). The survey results are reported on the basis of economic units. (One unit = one household.)
Economic units in 2004 participated in an average of 1.17 foreign games of chance. This average is slightly lower than that of 2002. It involves a total of 457,000 participations.
The shares of the foreign games of chance are very interesting:
- German lotto via system game (e.g. ABC lotto, Combiplay, ENI-lotto, Dr. Geissler, ILM club, Lotto Team and Stargames): 20%
- German lotto: 20%
- Süddeutsche Klassenlotterie (SKL): 18%
- Nordwestdeutsche Klassenlotterie (NKL): 26%
- ational Lottery (English lotto): 1%
- (Sports) betting/bookmaking (e.g. Ladbrokes, etc.): 2%
- Other foreign games of chance: 13%
The German lotto, according to this breakdown, is the main foreign game of chance (40 percent of the total), and German games of chance combined take up 84 percent of the total market.
What makes the numbers particularly interesting is that Süddeutsche Klassenlotterie, Nordwestdeutsche Klassenlotterie, the Deutschen Lotto and Totoblock (a cooperation of all the 16 state Lotto and Toto companies, which combine Internet Lotto and Toto products and sales and the U.K. National Lottery) are members (along with De Lotto) of the European Lotteries, the European State Lottery and the Toto Association, which have all taken positions against cross-border sales.