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.
During September’s SBC Summit Barcelona Digital event, Camilla Folladori, Head of Lotteries Concession Renewals at SISAL, took part in a discussion about the constantly developing lottery landscape and predicted its role in the future on a panel titled ‘Lotteries are no longer just lotteries’.
On the subject of international expansions of lotteries into other countries, Folladori talked about her organisation’s own experience with going international, discussing what brought about SISAL’s decision to expand.
She said: “We have a 70-year-old heritage and we’ve stayed in Italy until 2017. We decided to internationalise in 2017 and in the last two and a half years we have entered Spain and Morocco as well as Turkey.
“Firstly there are a number of factors driving our change. The two most important drivers that we took into account are an acknowledgement of the market potential outside Italy and second, we assessed our internal capabilities to see whether this path was successful or not. These to me were the two most important drivers.”
Folladori also spoke about the process of lotteries going international, explaining the steps required for an organisation to make the process successful. She said: “If you want to start a path of internationalisation you need to have the best structure possible but you also need to be brave and start it.
“Every time you move from the status quo to a new move there will be a number of factors that you can see as hindering your success and make you decide it’s better not to move. What you do need is a leadership/management team that is brave enough to overcome that challenge and infuse optimism in the company and commit deeply to this path.
“If you don’t have this prerequisite then it’s too hard to be brave enough to start it. To me, that is the most important part in transiting from domestic to international. Good to have structure, but you need to be brave.”
Click here to read more from the SBC Summit Barcelona Digital – ‘Lotteries are no longer just lotteries’ panel.
