Supermarkets playing the lottery

NOVEMBER 27, 2014
NEWS.COM.AU
WOULD you want to see lottery tickets and scratchies sold at the supermarket check-out? It could be happening very soon, if Tatts gets its way.
A moratorium on the practice in NSW is set to expire in April next year, and newsagents fear Tatts has quietly cut deals with Coles and Woolworths ahead of time.
The Newsagents Association of NSW and ACT (NANA) held an emergency meeting with the NSW Treasurer Andrew Constance today to plead for government intervention.
NANA chief executive Andrew Packham says the newsagents, some of whom source up to 90 per cent of their income from tickets and scratchies, will be severely affected.
There are around 1300 newsagents in NSW, 1200 of whom sell lottery products. There are an additional 300 or so small businesses that are lottery agents.
Mr Packham says based on the association’s numbers, about half the network would become “borderline viable” should the deal go through — some 600-odd small businesses could go under.
NSW and Queensland are the only states which currently restrict the sale of lottery products to small businesses. Queensland’s moratorium, negotiated when Golden Casket was privatised in 1996, won’t expire until the middle of the century.
Tatts, which offers lottery services in all states except WA, has been laying the groundwork that would allow it to offer a national network to the two retailers, Mr Packham says, with a trial currently running in a handful of Coles Express sites in Victoria.
“Tatts is a classic corporate behemoth,” he told news.com.au. “In a lot of ways they’re very old-fashioned — they have a bit of a master-servant thinking about our relationship, not the modern collaborative approach that a lot of firms work with.”
He said the meeting with the Treasurer today was “positive”. “We have agreed to mutually work through the complexities. It is a very complex situation, we recognise that. He has a very good understanding of our side, now he’s going to go back to Tatts to see what their side is.”
So, should lottery tickets be sold at the check-out?
Kirsten Shannon is manager of the Gambling Treatment Clinic at the University of Sydney’s School of Psychology, which treats up to 350 problem gamblers a year.
She says while in her 10 years at the clinic she can only remember one client with a problem with lottery tickets, the bigger issue was around creating a culture which normalises gambling.
“The less we make gambling available the better,” she said. “The more opportunities young people have to engage in gambling does impact their overall attitude.”
The prevalence of betting promotion in sports and new betting apps has led to an direct increase in the number of young people coming through the clinic, she adds.
“Whether making lottery tickets more available will have the same effect is hard to say. It’s a very different profile. But these questions need to be thought about.”
The five-year moratorium was agreed to by the former Labor government as a condition of privatising NSW Lotteries in 2010. The Daily Telegraph reported Tatts confirming its intention for a new “agreement” for retailers next July.
A Coles spokesperson said it was “too early to speculate” on any deal.
Woolworths declined to comment. Tatts has been approached for comment.