Guru fails to predict poor lotto figures

Recent figures show revenue from the lotto’s new online channel grew by 31.4 per cent* last year.

However, they also show the channel only only accounted for a meagre €23 million or 3.4 per cent of overall revenue.

Not particularly great when you consider the newly privatised franchise spent heavily on a marketing campaign, involving a sequence of expensive TV adverts featuring a guru high up in the Macgillycuddy’s Reeks comically failing to predict the next day’s lotto numbers.

The franchise was sold in 2014 for €405 million to Premier Lotteries Ireland (PLI) principally on the untapped potential of online.

Under the old system, operated by An Post, online registration was cumbersome and the operator was forbidden from marketing the online channel.

The Government did away with these restrictions in parallel with the privatisation process.

However, PLI's Canadian paymasters Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan won't exactly be popping champagne corks on foot of these numbers.

PLI's sister group in the UK, Camelot, had a similar growth for online but their offering accounts for nearly a fifth of overall revenue.

The operator here will, of course, point to the growth in interactive players, which rose by 61 per cent to over 225,000 in 2015 but the hoped for revenue windfall from online hasn’t materialised just yet.

Total Irish sales across all platforms last year was €670.4 million, representing a drop of 2.5 per cent on the €687.6 million in revenues throughout 2014.

This suggests the lottery is not benefitting from the pick-up in consumer spending and remains mired in recessionary metrics.

Has the new minimum ticket price of €4, albeit for a two-line play, been a factor?

Either way, PLI will have to halt this spiral if it is to justify the €405 million shelled out for the licence.

* this article was amended on 31/08/16 on account of a typographical error in the company’s accounts, which were submitted to the regulator and later published on the Oireachtas website