WHY WE NEED INNOVATIONS?

That question was asked from me two days ago. I’m not 100% sure what I answered to that, but I’ll tell you what I would answer now.

European Lotteries (EL) organized Innovation seminar here in Helsinki this week. My company Veikkaus acted as a hosting company and I believe that our team managed very well. The Innovation working group of EL did also excellent work when they planned the seminar program. We managed to get well-known keynote speakers like Dietmar Dahmen and Dave Caygill to our seminar. I’m not sure if I learnt anything specific from their presentations/shows, but at least I’m even more sure that we really need innovations! I had great opportunity to open that event and suddenly I was also asked to say the closing words and there my colleague Suvi asked the question in the heading of this blog.

The world is changing all the time. Consumers, and our customers, have more opportunities available. The competition has become tougher than it has ever before been and I’m sure that it won’t be easier anymore. I think that lottery companies have trusted that monopoly situation will secure them from the competition – I’m afraid that there still are many lotteries which are thinking that way… I’m sure that consumers don’t think that there is separate business area called lottery business or not even gambling business. Consumers just decide how they are going to use their money and lotteries and other gambling companies are in the middle of that “battle”.

If company would like to succeed in the competition, it should offer something special and different which customers would like to buy or pay for. If you are offering just an average product you could compete only with price which should be lower than the other companies have. It’s obvious that lotteries don’t have the lowest prices or the highest payout percent. If you can’t compete with the price, you should have something different compared to other companies. That’s why we need innovations!

I think that it’s already clear from my previous blogs that in my mind the customer is the King (or Queen)! We must always think about what the best solution for our customers is. It won’t help us, if we manage to develop excellent technical solution but consumers are not interested in that at all. Consumers are used to use service from great companies like Google, Facebook or Amazon and we should be at the same level than those giants are. How we can do that when we don’t have as much resources than they have? Cooperation might be the way to do that. Companies should utilize start-ups and their innovation capabilities. We should also find out good business partners, because we can’t do everything by ourselves. Companies should concentrate on areas where they are good and have strengths and let the partners take care of other issues.

The difficulty in innovation is that you don’t know what you are going to get there, or will you get anything. The scope of innovation work should be 2 – 5 years. If you are looking for something quicker innovation is probably not the solution. By improvement and development you could get something new quicker, but then the result won’t be so radical. Companies should allocate resources to all those three areas (improvement, development & innovation), because we can’t wait years to get something totally new.

Dietmar Dahmen spoke lots about customers and trust. That sounded very familiar to me. It’s extremely important that your customers would trust on you! It would be great to innovate products, services and above all business model which would responsible but at the same time profitable. I’m not sure how to make it, but I’m so keen on trying to do it. The result should customer oriented, personalized, easy, fun, modern and profitable solution for gambling business. Let’s innovate and try to make it happen!

RESPONSIBLE GAMING HAS IMPACT ON THE REPUTATION OF GAMBLING INDUSTRY

I have worked almost 30 years in gambling business and most of that time in lottery world where I was told to use word “gaming” instead of “gambling” when I was talking about our business. I’m not native English-speaking person so I don’t recognize all details in that language, but I believe that it wasn’t only about detail issue but rather about reputation of business. Lottery people have always thought that lottery is much softer and not so dangerous business than casino business is. Sports and Horse Betting are somewhere between those two areas. To me they all are gambling business and it doesn’t matter how soft or hard versions they are. I use gaming when I’m talking about casual and social games like for example Candy Crush Saga.

It is true that lottery games have caused much less, or almost at all, gambling problems than other gambling verticals. That’s one of the main reasons why lottery has had much better brand in the society than other games groups have had. The other reason has been “benefits for the society and good causes” ideology which has been the model all over the lottery world. It’s still very common that states have monopoly for lottery games and profit from those games is going to good causes. In other games groups that hasn’t been the case or if it has it’s not anymore. The gambling world has changed and is going to change.

Responsible gaming has always been important part of gambling business, but its role has increased rapidly during last few years. Especially in Europe responsible gaming has big role in political level discussion and I’m sure that other continents will follow soon or later. It’s important to understand what responsible gaming is about. To be honest I’m not expert on that area, but I have my own view about responsible gaming and I’ll try to explain how it should work.

Problem gambling and responsible gaming are not exactly the same issue but of course those two things are linked together. There are about 3 % of adults who have had gambling problems here in Finland. About 40 % of that group are serious problem gamblers which means that there are 50 – 60 000 people who really suffer. At least in Finland the most of gambling problems are caused by casino games and especially by slot machines. That’s why the former lottery company and horse betting company haven’t thought so much about gambling problems. Of course Horse and Sports Betting are reasons for some of those gambling problems but not at all at the same level than casino games. All game verticals have become quicker and harder and they are not anymore so different than they used to be before. Responsible gaming should be in the agenda of all gambling companies.

Gambling professionals seem to be worried what will happen to the reputation of our industry. There is more and more public discussion about that and unfortunately that discussion sounded to be rather negative one. It looks like gambling will follow the way which has happened in tobacco industry already many years ago. Smoking was very common when I was young adult, but nowadays it’s not acceptable at all. I think that gambling and smoking are not the same. Smoking is unhealthy for everybody, but gambling is not so dangerous for 80 – 95 % of people. Gambling is more like alcohol than tobacco when I think about problems caused by those things. It’s sure that gambling companies should do more in responsible gaming area, but there is no reason to ban whole gambling, because it causes problems for some of customers. We should concentrate on finding effective solutions to prevent those problems!

The problems won’t be solved if just some companies would change their rules, business models or whatever is needed to change. I think that whole industry should take responsible gaming really seriously, because it will affect on the reputation of industry. If there are companies which don’t care about the welfare of their customer, we can’t solve these problems, because problem gamblers would have companies where to move from the responsible companies. How we could solve that?

States, regulators and social welfare bodies, should decide and describe guidelines and the most important features for gambling companies which should operate according to those rules. I would describe that like “box” where companies should stay inside, but there they could run their business quite freely. If there would be any company which is not following those rules, that company should be punished very heavily and finally prevent whole operations of that kind of company. That model would work if whole industry would agree on that and there would be good cooperation between the industry and regulators.

What would be the best way to prevent gambling problems? I believe in personalization where gambling companies could utilize also other data sources than their own customer data. Unfortunately, it’s not legal to combine for example company’s customer data and data of the customers who have got help for gambling problems. In principle GDPR is good thing, but in gambling problem area it prevents to solve even bigger problems than customer’s privacy. One solution could be state level data center which could have “black box” where regulator could combine information about gambling problems, income/tax level and gambling data. The result of that kind of information would be personal level gambling limits and/or bans for gambling which should be mandatory for all license companies.

I believe more in personal limits than general level limits. I’m not sure if customers could really make right decisions by themselves when it’s about gambling limits. Regulators and social authorities & experts together with gambling companies should help customers to set them the best possible limits. Those limits could be separate in different gambling verticals (lottery, casino etc.). Gambling companies have and will have tools like AI and machine learning which could help them to make better work in responsible gaming area. I hope that gambling industry could find out the way to prevent gambling problems in more effective way than it’s the case now and at the same time we could continue to run our business without causing any useless disruption for those customers who could play our games without any problems!

WHO ARE INTERESTED IN THE US SPORTS BETTING MARKET?

It’s too long time when I wrote my blog last time. I spent last week in New York/New Jersey in the excellent Betting on Sports America event. I learnt there quite a lot about US Sports Betting opportunities and among other things had chance to give my advices to US lotteries.

I got also some feedback about my blog. I heard that quite many is reading my stories via mobile phone and it has been difficult to read it when I’m writing too long paragraphs. I now try to change my style a little bit and hopefully it will help.

It’s not 100 % sure what will finally happen there in USA. The PASPA decision seemed to chance everything and in fact made Sports Betting legal or at least made it “non-illegal”. But after that there was another court decision which changed almost everything… At this moment there are less than 10 States where Sports Betting is already allowed. There are also 10 – 15 States which are planning to make it possible quite soon. It’s possible that about half of US States will have legal Sports Betting in next few years.

About 90 % or even more of participants of the European Sports Betting seminars are already somehow involved in that business. That’s why I was surprised there in New Jersey when I noticed that at least half of audience didn’t have so much knowledge about our business. That was strange but at the same time fascinating. The whole business might change due/thanks to those newcomers and I’m keen on seeing what will really happen!

I try to make short analyzes about different interest groups who are involved in Sports Betting in USA. The first group is of course customers. There has been huge unregulated/illegal Sports Betting market in USA. Customers are already used to make a bet and that would help a lot but at the same time it means that customers are more critical and enlightened. If US companies won’t succeed very well it would be possible that the unregulated market will stay quite big.

There are lack of information and knowledge about gambling and Sports Betting among politicians and regulators. They should make big decisions but how they could take care of that if they don’t understand enough about consequences? The whole gambling industry should deliver as much valid information as possible, but we should understand that politicians won’t so much for our issues.

All top sports leagues are interested in Sports Betting. Their attitudes vary quite a lot but all of them are now thinking about their role in that new business in USA. The biggest ones NFL, MLB, NBA and NHL have already extremely big business by themselves, but they would like to control and get some more revenue also from gambling side. I don’t believe that any leagues would start their own Sports Betting business.

Las Vegas has been the only place in USA where Sports Betting has had legal role already many years. There are lots of gambling companies operating Sports Betting. Those companies might have good position if they could utilize scalability but I’m not sure if they can do that. The most popular sports in USA are different ones compared to Europe. Vegas bookmakers have razor-sharp analyzes about American football, baseball and basketball and it will be very difficult to beat them in those areas.

Some big European Sports Betting companies like William Hill have already established their operations to USA. Those companies are used to offer same products all over the world and scalability is one key word for their success. They have of course chance to manage in US market too, but it would be more difficult than they have expected it to be because they have to make it in slightly different way in all States. I have heard that they haven’t got so good revenues for example in New Jersey as they have expected.

How about US lotteries? They are used to outsourced they business operations to technology suppliers and probably they will do the same if they will decide to move to Sports Betting business. If they would like to manage in the heavy competition, they should control their customer database and operate at least in some areas in different way than the other operators are doing. I gave them two potential business ideas: they could offer “the most responsible” Sports Betting in US or/and they could offer “more lottery style” pool-based sports games too.

Big technology companies are used to operate some gambling products on the behalf of license holders and of course they would like to do the same also in Sports Betting. I won’t be surprised if some of those tech companies would like to own operating license by themselves too.

The big new player in gambling business might be media companies. The message from BOSA seminar was clear – all big US media companies are considering the business possibilities in Sports Betting market. The main scope is to make Sports Betting more entertaining than it has used to be. Media companies’ core customer group is sports fans not heavy punters. I have had that same idea already 15 years… Those big companies like ESPN or NBC have lots of money and if they decide to be big player in Sports Betting business I wouldn’t be surprised if we talk about 9 or even 10 digits investments! I guess that they won’t try to get operating licenses for themselves but some important roles they will have for sure.

There are also lots of investors who are looking for new business opportunities from gambling business. I’m not expert on that area but I have understood that there would be some billions of dollars available investments. Normally private investors are just looking for profits and that would make Sports Betting business even heavier than it’s used to be…

There are many critical things still open in US Sports Betting business. What would happen if interstate gambling would be allowed? It’s obvious that in that case different companies would manage. What kind of limitation there will be – for example now mobile gaming in allowed just in five US States? What will happen if Silicon Valley will concentrate on the gambling technology development? That might chance the whole industry and who will manage then in our business. I’m extremely keen on seeing what will happen and hopefully I could play some role there!

LOTTERIES IN SPORTS BETTING BUSINESS

I participated in Betting on Football (BOF) event in London earlier this week. I was there as an expert in two different panel discussions. The first one was about Sports Betting market stagnation and the other one was about lotteries role in Sports Betting business. I also chaired the European Lotteries Sports Betting working group meeting before that BOF event. So I have got lots of stimulation from Sports Betting business lately and I try to think about what that information might mean for lotteries.

The first question is what companies are lotteries? I’m not trying to write any official definition because I’m not able to do it anymore. Lottery used to be a company which offered Lotto games normally based on monopoly situation. The most of lotteries are used to have also some other games too. Nowadays it is more common that lotteries still have monopoly in Lotto games are but not so often in other gambling areas anymore. Some former lotteries have wide product portfolios and they are offering all kind of games. For example, my company Veikkaus has all possible gambling products like lottery, Sports Betting, Horse Betting, bingo, casino games, slot machines etc… Is Veikkaus lottery anymore? As in our panel discussion in London also here in this blog I mean by lotteries still the companies which are offering monopoly-based Lotto games and it doesn’t matter if they are offering other games either in monopoly or in license markets.

One of the questions in BOF panel was could lotteries offer Sports Betting? It was strange question to me because we have had sports games since 1940’s and introduced fixed odds Sports Betting already 25 years ago. I see sports games as natural part of our product portfolio. There are more than 70 lotteries as members in European Lottery Association and about 2/3 of them have sports games in their product portfolio. So, lottery could and should operate in Sports Betting business, but can they do that in same way than Sports Betting companies like William Hill, Ladbrokes, Unibet & co are doing? They should do that but in some cases legislation would set restrictions. If lottery has monopoly also in Sports Betting it can’t use exactly the same tools than “normal business companies”. The reason why states have gambling monopolies is to restrict and control that business. Normal it means limitation to the business which in open market cases don’t exist.

The French gambling business consultant Christian Kalb has made survey among European lotteries to analyze how those companies are offering their Sports Betting products. He found out that there seem to be three or actually four different kind of strategies in that area. There is small group of lotteries who have positioned themselves to real competition in that area and are running Sports Betting like business as usual. The second group is offering quite many sports games but with a little bit worse rules (payout etc.) than private companies. Surprisingly big third group has Sports Betting or Football Pools but are offering it mainly like lottery games. Fourth group is that 1/3 of companies who haven’t been willing or allowed to have Sports Betting at all. Companies from those different groups are totally different ones from customer point of view and I try to analyze the first and second group to find out the question what kind of possibilities lotteries might have in Sports Betting.

Some lotteries are among the biggest Sports Betting companies in the world. Someone might be surprised that Hong Kong Jockey Club is the member of World Lottery Association and it could be called as a lottery? There are two real big European lotteries in Sports Betting business too. Those companies are OPAP from Greece and FDJ from France. FDJ is operating in heavy competition in French digital market and manages very well. The other kind of example of competitive lottery in Sports Betting is from Denmark where the state changed the legal system from the beginning of 2012. Lottery Danske Spil was split to two separate companies Danske Lotteri Spil and Danske License Spil where both are still part of Danske Spil company. Danske License Spil is in heavy competition and have exact the same tools and rules than other Sports Betting companies have. The lottery monopoly Svenska Spel from Sweden has now faced the same kind of change than Danske Spil had 7 years earlier. I’m keen on seeing the first results from there and analyzing them after few weeks. I was surprised that Christian Kalb put also Veikkaus to that first group. I agree that we are trying to operate Sports Betting as business as usual but have many limitations compared to those private companies. Anyhow for those business-oriented lotteries Sports Betting is normal business and natural part of everything else and they seem to manage very well also in competition if they would have possibility and will to have same condition than the other ones.

Example of companies from the second group are German lotteries. They have had fixed odds Sports Betting already many years, but they don’t have competitive rules there at all. They had monopoly in Sports Betting in principle but in practice they have faced competition from the beginning. Those German lotteries have had right to cooperate with each other and they have managed to utilize their huge lottery customer potential a little bit also in Sports Betting, but they have lost the competition quite badly anyhow. Now there is new legal environment in Germany, but lotteries haven’t changed their Sports Betting offering. I’m now sure if the reason has been legal restriction or is the decision made by lotteries themselves? I think that lotteries should either offer real product or stay away that business totally. I understand some limitations like lower risk limits and a little bit lower payout percent but those shouldn’t be too far away from the market level. If lotteries are not willing to compete in fixed odds Sports Betting they could offer more “lottery style” sports games like Football Pools and pool-based sports betting products – for example Moniveto (correct scores in 3-4 football matches) here in Finland. It’s always better from customer point of view to get all products from one shop and that’s why all lotteries should have sports games in their portfolio.

RESPONSIBILITY – OPPORTUNITY OR THREAT?

Responsibility is ”the theme of the day” in gambling business. My colleague Sami Siltanen wrote about that in his blog www.patakuningas.com (in Finnish) last week. I decided to continue with the same theme but from slightly different perspective. You might think that everything has been said about responsible gaming and it’s impossible to find out any new views. That’s probably the case but it’s so important issue that I should try!

Gambling is so dangerous that states have decided to control that business heavily. Some of customers have big problems to control their own gambling. It’s very similar case than in alcohol consumption. If player can’t control his/her gambling the result could be extremely fatal. Society and gambling companies should do their best to prevent those cases.

EC Court of Justice has stated that the member states have possibility in gambling business to limit the free movement of products and services which is against the main principles of EC. That limitation would be possible if that would help member state to prevent problems related to gambling. That kind of problems could be criminal actions and also gambling problems.

What society could do to prevent gambling problems? Countries like Finland who have monopoly system in gambling business have an idea that monopoly at itself will reduce gambling and that would further reduce gambling problems. There are own gambling laws and rules in all countries and those laws will help states to control also gambling problems in principle level. Authorities have also some tools and they try to do their best to control gambling operations in practical level too. One big challenge is that digitalization has already break the state lines in practical level and it is more difficult to control all gambling.

I would say that there are two kind of problem gamblers. According to surveys there seem to be about 1 % of adults who have serious gambling problem – it’s like disease and their really need treatment for that. That 1 % level is surprisingly same in different countries although gambling legislations are quite different ones. According to surveys there are about 40 000 people who have serious gambling problems in Finland. Totally there are approximately 3 % of adults who suffer somehow from gambling issues. Those serious gambling addicts are included in that 3 %. So, there are totally about 130 000 Finns who have some kind of gambling problems and 1/3 of them have big problems. These numbers have been at the same level already years. There has been surprisingly less change in those numbers although the volume of gambling has increased.

What gambling company could or should do? I listened to the Swedish gambling problem researcher Thomas Nilsson already 25 years ago and I still remember what he said. According to Nilsson there are not so much what gambling company could do to prevent problems of those addicted players. They will find out new way to gamble anyhow and the society should take care of treatment of those people. Gambling companies should concentrate on the group of customers who have some problems and try to prevent them to move to more serious group. There are some tools like gambling limits and marketing pans which companies could use. Companies have nowadays more tools than they had before because there are more data available and that help companies to analyze their customers. From prevention point of view, it would be good to combine information from health care and gambling because then companies could even blog out all gambling addicted consumers. I understand why this is illegal from privacy and information security point of view and won’t happen…

Quite many gambling companies have started to talk about how responsible firms they are. Almost all companies have limits for gambling and they justify those limits with problem gambling reasons. In many cases that’s not the real reason at all! According to researches there seem to be just light correlation between gambling volume (euros) and problem gambling. If company would real like to reduce gambling problems responsibility should set up guidelines for whole business operations. Companies shouldn’t ask are we willing to select our business goals or responsibility! Gambling companies should decide frames for their business operations based on responsible values. Company should operate inside those frames. It should be clear to all employees what company could do and what not. There are for example product development tools which help to analyze how dangerous new game would be and it shouldn’t be allowed to introduce too addicted games. In short term it would be tough to notice that company will lose some customers to more irresponsible operators but in long term more responsible companies will finally win. I believe that responsibility will be one of the most important competitive edge in gambling business. The reason for that is that customers will trust on responsible companies more than the other ones!

Motivations of gambling

As I wrote in my previous blog it is extremely important to know your customers and understand their needs. Customers and their needs unfortunately vary quite a lot and that makes our business complicated but also interesting.

Old-fashioned way to analyze customers is based on sex and age. I don’t believe on that method at all! All women or millennials are not same kind of consumers. I admit that there are some major differences between the gambling habits of women and men, but you can’t utilize that information because it doesn’t tell almost anything about them as gamblers. If you know that women are buying more scratch cards than men or men are playing more horse racing than women, what then? Just small percent of men are interested in horse betting and you should know who they are and understand why they are doing that.

There are now lots of talk about millennials and digitalization. That’s is relevant discussion but not in that way which seems to be the most usual way to do it. Digitalization is important change to everybody not only to young customers! Millennials are more used to use internet and mobile solutions, but also older customers have adopted those new channels. Millennials are playing more social games, but not all of them and there are more and more older people doing that too.

I’m not sure if it will be possible to understand all individual needs of your customers in the future. Anyhow, now it’s not possible due to so huge amount of data which we need to do that and it’s still expensive try to use all that data. Probably data scientists will find more effective and cheaper ways to take care of those analyzes in next coming years. At this moment companies like Google, Amazon and Facebook are utilizing that kind of knowledge already and other businesses should follow then as soon as possible.

Because it is in practice impossible to serve all our customers from individual basis we should find out other ways to do it. I think that we could analyze our big data of customer behavior and based on that categorize our customers to different groups which are based on motivation of gambling. In old days companies used to make customer surveys where they asked why people are playing games. Some companies are still doing that but that’s almost useless. It’s the fact that people give wrong answers when you asked about their gaming and gambling. They underestimate their consumption in that area and don’t tell the real reasons for gambling. It’s very common to say reasons which sound acceptable from public opinion point of view. I’m not saying that companies shouldn’t use customer surveys at all, but I’m saying that they should understand better the role of data analytics.

I try to describe my idea here in short way. It would be too long story to write is with all details. Let’s decide that there are just three main reasons for gambling and all other motivations are subsections of those three. Based on my knowledge those main reasons are: 1. dreaming, 2. to pass the time and 3. sports. It’s important to understand that one single customer could have all those reasons in different time and place. It means that we can’t say that customer X is “dreamer” and customer Z is “sport fan” but we could say that customer X’s main motivation for gambling is dreaming and that information we could use. That information we could find out from our customer database. I know that there are still some gambling companies who don’t have real customer database and they can’t use that method. To be honest, it’s not the biggest problem which those companies have…!

I’ll try to explain a little bit more my idea. Let’s take first “dreaming”. Quite many people are dreaming about the better life, but they don’t have practical ways to change it. Although almost everybody knows that it’s real difficult to win big money from gambling they are still willing to try. The main two subsections in “dreaming” are “daily dreamers” and “life change dreamers”. Daily dreamers are buying quite often scratch cards and playing Keno and that kind of games and they would like to win just some money. Life change dreamers are spending just some euros mainly to lottery games and not weekly basis. They might buy lottery tickets when there is big jackpot in that game. The big part of their playing is to dream about what I would do if I would win. Then there are lots of people who has “extra time” and they spend part of that to gambling. In that area social games have big part but also slot machines or even casinos are part of that life. The third main motivation is sport and there are two main subsections: sport fans and sport punters. Sport fans are interested in sports and they spend lots of time to watch sports and sometimes spend some euros for sports (& horse) betting. Gamblers are also interested in sports, but they are mainly keen on betting. They try to use their expertise in sports to make money.

It’s important to know what kind of motivations there are and what kind of moments and places might be favorable for different motivations – for example men might have some extra time in shopping centers. As a disclaimer I would like to say that gambling companies should take care responsible gaming issues all the time and shouldn’t misuse information based on their databases. I’ll write more about responsible gaming sometimes later.

Who is this writer?

This is my first blog ever. I decided to follow my excellent co-workers Reijo Anttila and Sami Siltanen who started their blogs just 1 – 2 weeks ago. Both guys have already written great stories about gambling business. They have done that in Finnish and that’s why I decided to start my own blog mainly in English. English is not my native language which will mean that there might be some mistakes and for sure not so nuanced language as it would be in Finnish.

I think that it’s easy to start with the theme which I know better than anything else: ME – Jari V.! I believe that readers should know who I am? Everything I have done has not been huge success and there have been even some quite big failures but also great results too.

I have been involved in sports almost from my birth and gambling appeared to my life as a young kid. Those days no one talked about problem gambling… I used to play football and ice hockey and got my first racing horse (trotting) already at the age of 10 years. I guess that I was something like 5 years old when I made my first Football Pools bet and started Horse Betting at the age of 10 years. Ten years later when I went to the University I was almost professional gambler. During my studies I worked in some newspapers and wrote about sports but also worked in bank. I was planning to be banker as my father used to be but in autumn 1991 I noticed interesting position in Horse Betting company and managed to get it and started there in the beginning of 1992.

It would be too long story to tell all details what I have done during my years in Horse Betting company, Lottery company and Gambling company so here is the list of main projects where I have been the key person or have had at least important management role.

Purchase of new central system (IT) for Horse Betting company
The first national level Problem Gambling study in Finland
Preparation of the new Gambling Law in Finland
Planning of off track Horse Betting system –> nowadays it’s more than 90 % of total
Introduce of new Sports Betting and Horse Betting games
Launch of the first (lottery) Internet gambling business in the world – nowadays GGR (gross gaming revenue) is about 550 M€/year
Development of Mobile gambling
New Customer based business strategy and based on that customer database – nowadays there are more than 2 M customers
Introduce Live Betting as the first (or second) lottery in Europe
Establish of Product Development company together with IT company
Internationalization plan and run operations (CEO of subsidiary company) based on that -> the biggest disappointment of my career due to political decision to stop this operation!
Develop Innovation process for lottery company
New Strategy for the company (included in scenario work etc.)
Integration (merger) of three gambling companies: Fintoto (Horse Betting), RAY (Casino & slot machines) and Veikkaus (Lottery & Sports Betting) -> new Veikkaus: GGR 1,8 B€/year
Establish common Innovation network with 5 other lotteries
Establish common Product Development company with 3 other lotteries
Lots of roles in international gambling organizations – nowadays the head of Sports Betting working group of European Lotteries