Throughout the Christmas season, Lottery Daily will be taking a snapshot of what some of the industry’s thought leaders have been saying about the lottery business during this year’s digital conferences run by SBC events.
Back in April at SBC Digital Summit, Sami Kauhanen, Vice President of Betting at Veikkaus, took part in a discussion about how lotteries were adapting to a COVID-19 world and what role they can play for a society in enforced isolation on a panel titled ‘How lotteries are adapting to the outbreak’.
As the pandemic forced many lotteries to shift their operations online, Kauhanen emphasised at the time that responsible gaming must be at the forefront of industry thinking.
He also pointed out that mobile could fill the void left by the forced closure of the retail sector to mitigate the spread of COVID. He said: “Mobile will be the glue between the online and offline sector.
“The key thing will be how well lottery companies manage their customer relations between the mobile device, whether the customer is playing online or offline. But the whole customer relationship has to be built on mobile devices because nowadays, everyone is carrying a smartphone.
“One point I would like to make about the online development is that in terms of responsible gaming, the tools are much easier to develop on the online channel than it is for the offline sector. At least what we are doing at the moment is that we are creating limits for VLTs. It is a massive IT operation, but we are proud of the responsible gaming framework that we have in place for the online channel, and we have found that it is working very well.”
Alongside Kauhanen on the panel were Ludovico Calvi, President of Global Lottery Monitoring Systems; Arno de Jong, CMO at Nederlandse Loterij; and the panel moderator Harmen Brenninkmeijer, CEO of Quanta.
Calvi agreed with Kauhanen’s statement of lotteries making responsible gaming a top priority, as he called it a ‘social duty’ to protect customers. He said: “I think that we’re going to see a new balance in gaming. Governments are more and more in need of revenues.
“We will continue the process of legalisation of gaming and sports betting in general. But what I think will change is the level of corporate social responsibility and the standards of compliance which we need to implement as responsible gaming organisations, sooner rather than later.
“And the warning by regulators has been to be careful, this is a pandemic, and do not take advantage. So try to put as many provisions in place as possible such as self-exclusion, responsible gaming provisions, anti-money laundering provisions, match-fixing measures.
“We need to raise the level of compliance because we owe it as a social duty to our players. We need to be transparent, we owe this to the public. And I think that the more we do this, the more that gaming will become acceptable. I see this as an opportunity because if you raise the compliance, and lotteries are on the front line for innovation, this will make all the difference and gaming organisations will follow. It’s not a case of if we do this, it’s when.”
Click here to read more from the SBC Digital Summit – ‘How lotteries are adapting to the outbreak’ panel.
