Australia’s digital lottery market is heating up as Crown Resorts launches a new digital lottery product called CrownLotto.
It’s a move designed to shake up the rapidly growing Aussie digital lottery market, but it’s one that social critics are not happy about.
Crown Resorts announced their new lottery product early this week and expect to have a workable product available to Aussie punter by the end of the week.
Digital lotteries, in which players wager on the outcome of a lottery drawing rather than entering the lottery itself, are a rapidly growing sector of the always massive Australian gaming market. Published reports indicate that Lottoland, Crown Resorts’ chief rival in this market, is pulling in more than $1 million a week on its digital lottery product. According to a report on the Australian Financial Report, digital lottery sales account for 14 percent of the Australian lottery market.
As is so often the case in Australia, the new gambling product raised the ire of social critics and anti-gambling advocates. This time, they’re concerned that unlike traditional Australian lotteries, digital lotteries do not contribute a share of their earnings to social causes. Crown Resorts has responded to this criticism by agreeing to donate a portion of its digital lottery earnings to social causes.
Some critics also maintain that digital lotteries are bad for land-based business in the Land Down Under because they steal customers from standard lotteries, a charge that was quickly refuted by a Crown Resorts spokesperson who said:
Lottery wagering attracts a different demographic and will grow overall interest in lotteries, rather than competing with traditional physical lotteries.
No matter what digital lotteries do the land-based lottery market in Australia, it’s clear that digital lotteries are likely here to stay.