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LOTTERY
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| Vol. 30 No. 4 -- Monday January 24 , 2005 |
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SAZKA, a.s., Offers the First Lifelong Rent in History of Czech Lotteries PRAGUE, Czech Republic (January 12, 2005) -- Several attractive innovations have been prepared for the players in the new year by the largest operator of numbers lotteries, instant lotteries and betting games in the Czech Republic – the joint stock company SAZKA. Within the scratch ticket instant lottery linked with TV show T-Mobile RENTA, it offers the bettors the lifelong rent for the first time in history of domestic lotteries!
From beginning of this year the players can win the monthly rent in RENTA game in the amount of CZK 30, 000 (EUR 1, 000), which will be paid until the end of their lives. The game is also comprised of other attractive winnings, e.g. the monthly rent of CZK 100, 000 (EUR 3, 300), which can be paid to a successful player during nearest 10 years. In addition to the main winning, the players can win the instant winning up to CZK 100, 000 (EUR 3, 300) directly on SAZKA, a.s.´ terminals or succeed in the telephone game, the highest winning of which increased from initial CZK 400, 000 (EUR 13, 200) to CZK 500,000 (EUR 16, 500). The ticket price remains unchanged, i.e. CZK 30 (EUR 1). The scratch ticket instant lottery T-Mobile RENTA is played from September 2003 and the draw is presented every Sunday in a regular TV programme. In compliance with the gaming plan, the winning is paid as a regular monthly rent, a winner withdraws by means of a special payment card. The instant lottery T-Mobile RENTA tickets also provides players with a special bonus. If he/she recharges the pre-paid GSM TWIST card within the nearest 35 days via SAZKA,a.s.´s on-line terminal by CZK 400 and more (EUR 13,3), the phone credit will be increased by the full ticket price, i.e. by CZK 30 (EUR 1), upon presentation of the respective receipt! The players can thus get the ticket itself for free. SOURCE: SAZKA, a.s. (http://www.sazka.cz). Finnish Lottery Veikkaus Records 8.8% Growth in 2004, Achieved Return Objectives to the State VEIKKAUS, Finland (January 20, 2005) --Veikkaus' turnover amounted to € 1,260.8 million in 2004, representing a growth of €101.5 million (8.8%) over the previous year.
We reached growth in all our product groups. The total turnover of the lotto games was €493.5 million (+ 8.5%). In the games of skill it was € 328.7 million (+14.2%). Other online games were sold for € 291.7 million (+7.1%) and instant games for € 146.9 million (+1.8%). Of the individual games, Fixed Odds Betting and Keno increased their popularity most. After the game reform in February, Fixed Odds Betting sold as much as 99.9 percent more. In all, Fixed Odds Betting was played with € 97.0 million and Keno with € 220.3 million (+11.0%) in 2004. The turnover of Veikkaus' most popular game Lotto increased as well (+8.7%). Lotto sales were enhanced especially by the large jackpots of the end of the year. In November (round 45/04), a family from the town of Kokkola in north-western Finland won the all-time record lotto jackpot in Finland, € 5.7 million. Finns played Lotto for € 421.4 million in 2004, i.e. some € 83 per capita. We reached the lottery funds objective fixed in the State budget, € 375.8 million. This means that Veikkaus returned over one million Euros to its beneficiaries - the Finnish arts, sports, science and youth work - via the Ministry of Education. Further information contact: Executive Vice President Jussi Isotalo, tel. +358 20 750 7213, jussi.isotalo@veikkaus.fi SOURCE: Veikkaus eNews. NEW YORK, USA (January 18, 2005) -- Scientific Games Corporation (NASDAQ:SGMS) announced that its subsidiary Autotote Enterprises Inc. completed an agreement with TRAXCO, Inc., a subsidiary of the Treasure Bay V.I. Corp. to supply racebook services as part of Autotote’s turnkey off-track betting (OTB) services. The agreement is for five years and is valued at $3 million. TRAXCO, Inc. recently completed an exclusive franchise agreement with the St. Croix Racing Commission to open a racebook and operate the existing track on St. Croix. Autotote will supply OTB services to TRAXCO, Inc. at the Divi Carina Bay Casino operated by Treasure Bay V.I. Corp and simulcast center at the Randall "Doc" James Racetrack in Christiansted, and other satellite OTB locations on St. Croix to be developed later. Bernie Burkholder, president of TRAXCO, Inc. said, "We believe offering a racebook to our clients will enhance our product and we are excited about our association with Autotote." There are eight other Divi Caribbean island resorts including locations on Aruba, Barbados, Bonaire, St. Maarten and Cayman Brac. Rick Pullman, president of Autotote Enterprises, said, "We are extremely pleased to have the opportunity to work with TRAXCO, Inc. and the Treasure Bay group in this exciting new offering at their first-class gaming resort. Our record of success in supporting similar racebook operations in St. Thomas and St. John, as well as the casino racebooks at Isle of Capri and Mohegan Sun, will serve us well in St. Croix where the islanders are avid racing fans."
The first racebook at the Divi Carina Bay Casino & Resort is scheduled to launch in the first quarter of 2005. About Scientific Games Scientific Games Corporation is the leading integrated
supplier of instant tickets, systems and services to lotteries, and the leading
supplier of wagering systems and services to pari-mutuel operators. SOURCE: Scientific Games Corporation. Excitement will RISE Waiting for the Red Ball to FALL! LANSING, Michigan (January 17, 2005) -- For a Limited Time Only! Between January 17 - February 5, 2005 after the regular Daily 3 evening drawing, the Lottery will conduct another drawing from a separate machine holding 5 white balls and 1 Red Ball.
When the Red Ball is drawn, the Lottery will then draw a SECOND set of Daily 3 numbers, giving players a SECOND chance to win on the same ticket - and making lots more winners! The Lottery will pay out the exact same prize amounts for the Red Ball Double Draws as for the regular drawings. When a white ball is drawn it will be taken out of the machine and set aside (making one less white ball to draw from the next night and increasing the chance of drawing the Red Ball) and no Double Draw will happen that night. The Lottery will take out a white ball every night until the Red Ball is drawn. Whenever the Red Ball is drawn, all the balls will be returned to the machine for the next drawing. It is guaranteed that at least three Red Ball Double Draws will occur during the promotion Players can watch the drawings LIVE every evening at 7:29 pm on their local Lottery network TV station! SOURCE: Michigan Lottery media release.
IGT and Scientific Games Announce Worldwide, Long-Term Strategic Alliance RENO, Nevada, USA (January 14, 2005) -- IGT (NYSE: IGT) and Scientific Games Corporation (Nasdaq: SGMS) have agreed to formalize terms for a worldwide, long-term strategic alliance to jointly provide products for the converging gaming market.
The alliance will combine key new technology and development initiatives utilizing Scientific Games AEGIS® Video Control systems and IGT Advantage™ systems products, including Accounting, Patron Management, Bonusing and the EZ Pay™ ticket system, for use in the rapidly growing government-sponsored gaming, pari-mutuel wagering and commercial gaming markets. In the near term, both companies will cooperate in the submission for the Louisiana procurement for a central monitoring system, which will feature a comprehensive combined solution to meet the expectations of the Louisiana market. The financial terms of the alliance were not disclosed. Scientific Games
Corporation is the leading integrated supplier of instant tickets,
systems and services to lotteries, and the leading supplier of wagering systems
and services to pari-mutuel operators. IGT (http://www.IGT.com) is a world leader in the design, development and manufacture of microprocessor-based gaming and video lottery products and software systems in all jurisdictions where gaming or video lottery is legal. SOURCE: IGT (http://www.igt.com). Smartplay International Announces Second Placement of Its Origin™ Digital Draw System SOUTHAMPTON, New Jersey, USA (January 20, 2005) -- Smartplay International Inc. today announced the second placement of its Origin™ digital draw system.
The Arizona Lottery follows the New Mexico Lottery in its decision to convert drawing operations to the Smartplay system. Installation is planned for late February. About Smartplay Established in 1993, Smartplay is dedicated to the creative
development and manufacture of lottery drawing equipment. SOURCE: Smartplay International, Inc. CONTACT: Linda Turner, Vice President, Sales, +1 609 859-1133. OGT’s Cyber Games™: the Safest Way to Play Games on the Internet MONTREAL, Quebec, Canada (January 19, 2005) -- Following an article published on the BBC News website on January 13, 2005 and some warnings published on different websites regarding a Windows™ virus that travels with the popular multimedia game Tetris®, Oberthur Gaming Technologies ("OGT") is proud to confirm that its Cyber Games™ are safe and not subject to such viruses. OGT’s games are multimedia lottery games played on the Internet and totally different from the regular Internet games. They are not only the most fun and entertaining lottery games aimed at bringing new players to the lottery industry, OGT’s Cyber Games™ are the best way to play safe and legal games on a computer. Entirely developed in-house by INGENIO, a subsidiary of Loto-Québec, the content of OGT’s Cyber Games™ is designed using INGENIO’s patented multimedia lottery methodology. The patented process developed by INGENIO comprises the highest standards of security, which are required by the lottery industry to guarantee the product’s integrity and to protect the Lottery’s reputation. INGENIO’s patented methodology includes all development stages, i.e. graphic design, sound track and sound effects, as well as all multimedia applications and programming. Also, because INGENIO develops multimedia lottery games from scratch rather than using source codes from existing Internet games, OGT’s Cyber Games™ are absolutely safe. OGT’s Cyber Games™ are based and inspired by world-renowned games concepts and play actions, such as Cyber Slingo® and Tetris®.
About Tetris® About INGENIO
About Oberthur Gaming Technologies (www.oberthurgt.com) SOURCE: Lyse Trudel, Communications Officer, Oberthur Gaming Technologies (+1-514) 254-3600, ext. 101. ROME, Italy (January 19, 2005) -- Starting from tomorrow, January 20, customers may pay their Enel bill by Bancomat Card at 20,000 tobacconists, bars, bet collection points and stationers showing the PUNTOLIS® brand, and all those shops selected and linked to the Lottomatica Italia Servizi and Totobit (Lottomatica Group companies) networks.
Customers may also pay at tobacconists outside the Lotto Game network, but linked to the Servizi Base 2001 network (a company owned by FIT - Federazione Italiana Tabaccai). These infrastructures jointly represent Italy’s most extensive citizen services network, performing approximately 190 million transactions every year, with a counter-value exceeding € 2.2 billion (Euro). This new service is the result of an agreement between Enel and LIS Finanziaria to provide customers with a new simple and fast payment service. To pay Enel bill, the PUNTOLIS® Point assistant needs just Enel Customer number and the amount to be paid, indicated in the top right of the bill, and then pay using your Bancomat Card. Customer is given a receipt, certifying the transaction; this will be communicated to Enel on-line and in real-time, registered on its own system and reported in the bank account statement as Enel bill Bancomat payment. The service, performed in cooperation with FIT - Federazione Italiana Tabaccai, is provided every day from 6 a.m. to 11 p.m., including holidays, at a cost of 1 Euro (the same cost charged by other collecting bodies for similar services). It is easy to identify shops providing the service: all of them, in fact, show the window sticker "Pay your Enel bill here!" and "PUNTOLIS® - Lottomatica Italia Servizi - a fast service does pay". SOURCE: Lottomatica media release. Camelot Optimises UK's Mobile Phone Lottery with Mercury UNITED KINGDOM (January 19, 2005) -- Mercury Interactive Corporation (NASDAQ: MERQ), the global leader in business technology optimization (BTO), today announced that it is helping enable Camelot, the U.K. lottery operator, to optimise the quality, performance and availability of Play by Text - the service which enables players to purchase tickets for National Lottery games through their mobile phone. Camelot uses Mercury Quality Center™, Mercury Performance Center(tm) and Mercury Business Availability Center™ to ensure Play by Text offers the high level of customer service that National Lottery players have come to expect. Camelot is committed to operating The National Lottery in a socially responsible way, ensuring maximum returns for Good Causes.
Camelot uses Mercury to ensure that its business applications are able to support the high levels of service expected by its customers. Since Camelot launched it's interactive offerings, Mercury has delivered a full return on investment by reducing the manual effort involved in testing and monitoring the performance of its business applications. Most recently, Mercury Performance and Quality Centers were used to deliver applications that enable Camelot customers to play Lotto by text message through their mobile phone. "Although we manage a high number of relatively low value transactions, each ticket has the potential of extremely high value winnings," said Eric Brown, head of interactive technology at Camelot Interactive. "In our game environment there is no margin for error and launching the mobile phone capability for The National Lottery was no exception. The ability for us to deliver new applications and make changes to our IT with total confidence is crucial to our business. Mercury has long been our partner in enabling us to optimise our IT to meet our business requirements." "Mercury enabled Camelot to be assured that customer services levels would be consistently high when it launched Play by Text," said David Harrison, U.K. managing director at Mercury. "Optimising technology for critical, immediate business needs has become a major focus for companies as they launch new services and expand their operations." Mercury Quality Center provides automated software testing and quality assurance across a wide range of IT and application environments. It includes an integrated suite of role-based applications and best-practices as well as an open, scalable, and extensible foundation - all designed to optimise and automate key quality activities including test management; requirements and defects tracking; functional testing and regression testing; and business-process design testing. Mercury Performance Center optimises application performance, helping ensure applications will scale to support the right number of users, transaction volumes, and performance levels. Mercury Performance Center includes integrated applications and a business dashboard for key performance optimisation activities including load-testing; performance tuning; capacity planning; and J2EE diagnostics across complex, heterogeneous computing environments. Mercury Business Availability Center is an application management offering that provides the ability to view key business process and system indicators in real-time from an end-user business- and service-level perspective. It enables companies to proactively detect application performance problems, manage availability according to service levels and business priorities, and quantify the business impact of application downtime. As a result, companies can reduce mean time to identification (MTTI), improve service level performance and minimise application downtime. ABOUT CAMELOT Camelot Group plc is the operator of The National Lottery and is committed to raising money for the Good Causes designated by Parliament. Camelot is not responsible for distributing or awarding these funds. To date, over £16 billion has been raised for Good Causes by The National Lottery, with over 180,000 individual projects benefiting across the UK - the biggest programme of civic and social regeneration since the 19th Century. The National Lottery has given away over £23.5 billion in prizes and created over 1,700 millionaires or multi-millionaires since launch in 1994. Camelot launched Instant Win Games on the internet in February 2003 and draw-based games, Lotto and Daily Play followed in December 2003. Camelot launched Instant Win Games on the internet in February 2003 and Lotto and Daily Play followed in December 2003. Lotto launched on Sky Active in April 2004 and EuroMillions - Europe's biggest lottery game - went live on the internet and Sky Active service in July 2004 Play by text is available to mobile phone users across all major UK networks including Orange, O2, T-Mobile, 3 and Vodafone and virtual operators such as Virgin Mobile, Tesco Mobile, Fresh and BT Mobile
Approval of the National Lottery account is subject to accreditation. The company uses an accreditation system developed with Experian to ensure that only players who are over 16 and over, resident at UK or Isle of Man address and legally entitled to play will be able to set up a National Lottery account Camelot is committed to the highest standards in player protection and social responsibility in both the retail and internet environments and was ranked in Business in the Community's 2003 Top 100 Companies That Count in terms of social responsibility. Camelot runs one of the most cost efficient lotteries in the world, using only 5 per cent of total revenues in operating costs. At 40 per cent of total sales (28 per cent to Good Causes and 12 per cent in lottery duty to the Government), Camelot returns a higher proportion of lottery revenue back to society than any other lottery in the world High resolution photographs are available to the media free of charge at http://www.newscast.co.uk (Tel: 020 7608 1000). Players of all National Lottery games must be aged 16 or over. ABOUT MERCURY Mercury Interactive Corporation (NASDAQ: MERQ), the global leader in business technology optimization (BTO), is committed to helping customers optimize the business value of information technology. Founded in 1989, Mercury conducts business worldwide and is one of the fastest growing enterprise software companies today. Mercury provides software and services to govern the priorities, people and processes of IT; deliver and manage applications; and integrate IT strategy and execution. Customers worldwide rely on Mercury offerings to improve quality and performance of applications and manage IT costs, risks and compliance. Mercury BTO offerings are complemented by technologies and services from global business partners. For more information, please visit http://www.mercury.com. New Ontario Gaming Strategy to Focus on a Sustainable Responsible Industry TORONTO, Ontario, Canada (January 20, 2005) - The Ontario government today announced its gaming strategy, which includes no additional casinos, an increased focus on social responsibility and a commitment to ensuring the competitiveness of Ontario's gaming industry. "Our plan puts social responsibility front and centre in the management of gaming in Ontario," said Economic Development and Trade Minister Joseph Cordiano. "We are building a responsible, sustainable plan that also safeguards jobs and public investments in Ontario's gaming assets." The government today announced that there will be:
In support of its focus on social responsibility, the government dedicates two per cent of gross slot machine revenue from charity casinos and racetrack slot facilities - $36 million in 2004-05 - to the problem gaming strategy, already one of the best funded in North America. The government has also asked Stanley Sadinsky to make recommendations to help guide further enhancements to the problem gaming strategy. Mr. Sadinsky will report back in the spring. In addition, the government will:
In support of the industry, Minister Cordiano has also instructed the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation to act on the following measures:
More than 20,000 jobs in Ontario are directly related to gaming, with thousands more spin-off jobs in the tourism and hospitality sectors. The industry also generates more than $2 billion annually for provincial priorities such as healthcare and education. "This industry experienced explosive growth in the last ten years," said Cordiano. "Our plan will not only keep the industry competitive, but also provide gaming in a socially responsible manner." For further information contact: Declan Doyle, Minister's Office, (416) 325-8779 or Neil Trotter, Communications Branch, (416) 325-6682.
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