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// PUBLIC GAMING INTERNATIONAL // J
anuary/February 2016
and we are setting an ambitious pace to
meet the needs of the modern consumer.
Lottery should feel good about how it
fulfills the expectations of its variety of
stakeholders. And we are excited about
the opportunities to continually improve
and further increase the value we deliver
to the players and our stakeholders. That
is our goal now—to create the platform
and set the standards for operational ex-
cellence while also driving innovation
and progress.
Government-Lottery operates in a very
special place. We must compete for the
business, as we are disputing a share of
the consumer’s leisure expenditures, in
a market-driven system. And yet, we are
bound by obligations to a standard that
is higher than anyone else’s. That is as it
should be, as long as others in the games-
of-chance industry raise their standards
so that the overall level of security, in-
tegrity, responsible gaming, and all other
measures to protect the interests of the
consumer are always improving.
Much of what we are doing is still
at the early stages. The EL president,
Hansjörg Höltkemeier, is setting the
agenda and we are all working together
to chart the course for the EL to opti-
mize its support for its membership of
European Lotteries to build successful
and sustainable businesses.
Your focus on innovation is more on the lo-
gistics, distribution, and operational sides
of the business. And Retail in particular.
Less about technology and new products.
F. Paes Afonso:
Innovation is so of-
ten associated with technology and cre-
ative game development. Let me give you
an example about how a focus on process
delivered a tremendous benefit to the
government and the consumers of Portu-
gal, as well as to Santa Casa Games De-
partment and its beneficiary Santa Casa
da Misericórdia. We saw that there were
two issues, seemingly unrelated. One,
we would like to have our players regis-
ter to play and be assigned a player card.
But we wanted to make it as easy for the
consumer as possible. We didn’t want to
impose a process that would potentially
discourage player-ship, right? The other
issue is that the government has a hard
time collecting sales taxes from busi-
nesses. Some businesses would give the
consumer a small consideration to entice
them to pay in cash, waive the require-
ment for a receipt, and then not report
the sale to the government, and in that
way avoid paying the tax on the sale. Of
course, this is not an uncommon prob-
lem for governments everywhere. We rec-
ognized an opportunity to both help the
government solve this problem and make
it easy for the consumer to register with
the Lottery.
In Portugal, everyone has a “fiscal
number” that is used in any transaction.
When I go to a restaurant and pay for
the lunch, the receipt has my fiscal num-
ber, only if I want. We proposed to the
government to organize a weekly draw
game based on all receipts transmitted
electronically from the sellers to the trea-
sury administration with the fiscal num-
ber of the buyers. A high standard car is
the weekly prize. The only thing one has
to do to become eligible for the draw is
to ask the receipt of a purchase with the
respective fiscal number. They do not
have to enter in personal information of
any kind because the government already
has that on file. Their personal informa-
tion is associated with their unique fis-
cal number. In order to be sure that my
receipts are considered for the draw, the
only thing I have to do is to enter my
personnel fiscal e-account. If one receipt
is not there I can up-load it. This causes
the consumer to request a receipt for all
of their consumer purchases so they can
enter it into the draw game. The receipt
identifies the merchant and the sales
amount. The merchant now must report
the sales properly because the govern-
ment auditors are able to connect the
receipt numbers entered into the draw
game with the sales that the merchant
has made. That in turn causes the mer-
chants to comply with the law that re-
quires them to report the sales and pay
taxes on those sales. The prize that is paid
out to the winners of this draw game is
a very, very small portion of the tax re-
ceipts that accrues to the government as a
result of businesses now complying with
the law to report their sales.
That’s amazing. It also creates a fresh form
of brand awareness for the Lottery. A whole
new game, a new way for the consumer to
play the Lottery.
F. Paes Afonso:
Exactly. Market-
driven solutions are always better than
government fiat. The Lottery is a fun
game. Let’s figure out ways to use that
fact to engage the consumer and drive
behavior in ways that benefit everyone.
This draw game that uses the fiscal
and receipt numbers was started in 2014.
Now, it has become very automatic for
Portuguese consumers to enter this week-
ly draw, entering the receipt numbers for
a chance to win a prize. And restaurants,
convenience stores, and consumer-facing
merchants are reporting and paying their
taxes properly. And we have a consumer
who is registered and engaged in an inter-
active online relationship with the Lot-
tery. Further, consumers are now much
better informed about the resource that
is their own personal fiscal number. This
enables them to view their own fiscal his-
tory and data on all matters, not just Lot-
tery. Now, most Portuguese know their
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