Australia’s Parliament has approved measures prohibiting online gaming operators from offering bets on lottery results.
When the ban takes effect in six months, including with it a requirement that online lottery bettors buy a ticket in the relevant draws, it will stand as a major victory for traditional lottery providers such as betting giant Tabcorp and Tabcorp’s Tatts Group over digital upstarts like Gibraltar-based Lottoland.
It’s also being hailed as a win for lottery-selling news agents, which have been waging an aggressive campaign against Lottoland, arguing the popular website has been hurting their businesses and eroding millions of dollars in state lottery taxes that would otherwise help pay for important community services and infrastructure.
“This will protect Australia from synthetic lotteries and will bring important new consumer protections by closing the loophole that lotto betting sites have been operating out of,” said Adam Joy, chief executive of the Australian Lottery and Newsagents Association. “We now call on all synthetic lottery operators to do the right thing by Australians and cease offering these products immediately.”
Not all stakeholders agree, however. The Newsagents Association of New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory argued the ban would cement Tabcorp’s monopoly of lotteries in Australia.
Independent Sen. David Leyonhjelm blasted it as a “shameful, protectionist measure” that would “lock out a new and innovative business”.
“We should not be closing down businesses, we should be encouraging them,” he said.
What’s certain is that Lottoland has stirred controversy since its arrival Down Under, particularly through its provocative TV advertising, and is said to have amassed a customer base of more than 650,000 active users.
“It is a great pity that the Senate did not give due consideration of the unintended consequences the new laws will have, not just on our customers, but on competition and innovation,” said Lottoland’s Australia CEO Luke Brill.
He added that the company was “well-advanced in looking at other ways we can continue to deliver choice to the 700,000 Australians who have registered with us over the past two years.”
