EveryMatrix Lottery’s Digital Divide Nikolina Gabelica, Managing Director, Lottery at EveryMatrix, believes Europe’s
lotteries have enormous advantages as they move online, but digital success requires more than transferring familiar retail products onto a screen. Speaking exclusively to G3 in Copenhagen, she explains why player behaviour, loyalty, technology and the changing role of retail are forcing lotteries to rethink how they compete.
European lotteries are not short of scale. Te sector generates around €109bn in annual sales and €46bn in GGR, while returning almost €30bn to society. Yet beneath those numbers sits a contradiction: lottery remains an overwhelmingly retail business at a time when the wider gambling and entertainment markets are increasingly digital.
During EveryMatrix’s media event in Copenhagen, Head of Lottery Nikolina Gabelica highlighted that just 13.4 per cent of European lottery GGR currently comes online. For traditional draw-based games, the figure is lower still at 7.6 per cent. Te disparity between individual markets is equally significant. Norway has become Europe’s digital outlier, with eight in every €10 of lottery sales made online, while in Spain the equivalent figure is around €3 in every €100.
For Gabelica, however, the gap cannot simply be explained by some lotteries understanding digital better than others. “It also depends on the country where you are living,” she tells G3. “Do you have internet penetration and mobile penetration on the same level as another country? Nordics are also advanced in digital payments.”
Local habits matter too. In parts of the Balkans, she notes, cash remains important to players, as does the anonymity afforded by retail betting and lottery purchases. “I don’t think it’s about them not having the ability or the technology to have more games online. It’s the mentality as well.” What will eventually change that equation is the player.
Younger consumers already conduct much of their lives through their phones and Gabelica sees little reason to expect them to adopt
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traditional lottery purchasing habits simply because they reach legal playing age. “Te switch will come because the players are changing,” she says. “Tey’re doing everything on their mobile. Once they grow old enough to play lottery or sports betting, they won’t be going to the shops. It’s convenient for them to do everything in life.” It’s a transition that has taken longer than Gabelica expected, but it is already exposing different levels of digital maturity across Europe.
COMPETITION CHANGES THE LOTTERY
Competition is one of the forces accelerating the process. Te opening of gambling markets creates obvious commercial pressure, but Gabelica argues that lotteries are competing for attention beyond the regulated gambling sector. She points to games such as Candy Crush Saga as an example of the type of experience that has shaped younger consumers’ expectations around gamification and digital engagement.
“It’s not gambling, but it’s your competition,” she says. “I’m not saying the lottery should be fully like that, but some of the things younger players are used to have to be part of your product as well.”
Lotteries retain powerful brands, considerable revenues and, in many cases, exclusive access to traditional lottery products. Such advantages can also reduce the urgency to change. Retail also carries political and social significance. European lotteries support around 55,000 full-time jobs and operate through hundreds of thousands of points of sale. Moving customers online therefore has implications beyond a simple channel migration.
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