NLCB tunes $weet spot

By ramping up the technology to curb fraud in its games and bringing terminal owners in line, the NLCB is putting the pieces in place to further cement its place in people’s pockets.

At last week’s launch of the NLCB’s online logo and advertising campaign at the Hilton Trinidad, NLCB chairman Louis Lee Sing said every day 34,280 persons purchase winning tickets worth $2,288,128 in cold hard cash.

"In the last six months alone, 4.5 million persons walked away with cash winnings to the whopping amount of $329,490,467," Lee Sing revealed.

He said since these games were placed online, the popularity of its stable of lottery games — Lotto Plus, Cash Pot, Donsai, Pick Two, Scratch and Play Whe — had increased over the last decade.

These games have always been a cash cow for the government: Close to $971 million were desposited in the State’s coffers in 2004, and profits are expected to soar in the future

The online lottery creates an average of seven millionaires every year, said the NLCB boss.

He predicted that with the introduction of new games and new technologies in the near future and growing interest in the population to participate in these games, the prospects of even bigger returns for the gaming industry and the country as a whole were quite promising.

Noting that the NLCB has consistently remitted to the Treasury "hundreds of millions of dollars" from its profits, Lee Sing said the company is determined to ensure that its electronic lotto terminals bring a return on the investment of the highest order to all stakeholders.

He added that just as the operators of NLCB electronic lotto terminals understand the importance of the bottom line, so to does the Government which views the terminals as "an instrument to be used and maximised to get a return on its investment."

To this end, Lee Sing said the NLCB will soon be at a point where the owners of lotto terminals who do not carry all the company’s on-line games will be relieved of those terminals. The equipment, he said, will then be "placed in the hands of people who are prepared to carry all the games and recognise that the terminal you possess is really a business instrument."

The shareholder must expect the highest return on the investment, he argued.

Lee Sing also identified fraud as another way in which the country could be deprived of the valuable lottery returns and attributed this to the fact that NLCB handles large volumes of paper as it collects and disburses money.

The NLCB chairman said to close these loopholes from the criminals, the company is currently moving to completely reorganise through an effective state-of-the art computerisation programme that will see the company becoming a paperless one.

He vowed that in this new system "checks and balances will be instant and one in which fraud will be more easily and quickly identifiable." Lee Sing also indicated that NLCB is also looking for a new home to handle its growing operations because it is now "bursting at the seams."

G-Tech’s Latin America Corporation (TT), acting manager, Robert Vazquez, boasted that two-thirds of all the lotteries worldwide have selected G-Tech as its systems provider and partner. With over 100 billion transactions worldwide annually, which, he said, exceeds the annual combined totals of American Express, VISA and Mastercard and with business operations in 40 countries on six continents, Vazquez said his company regards TT as one of its "jewels" in the Caribbean.

He said G-Tech has worked with the NLCB over the last decade to develop its online games and bring increased revenues to the government. This was done "without sacrificing the traditional lottery games called classics and the families that earned a living selling this lottery."

"We have invested millions of dollars in this country in new infrastructure and personnel," he stated.

Vazquez said in addition to the new online games, G-Tech’s investment will focus on developing initiatives, such as the Via, where consumers do many every day transactions and play the lottery at a single location.

The Caribbean, according to Vazquez, has been one of G-Tech’s biggest success stories and pointed to the Leeward Islands and its LOCO game. It is, he claimed, was the world’s first online system to deliver a lottery online solution to multi-jurisdictions with multi-currencies.

Something unheard of in the US, he said.