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January/February 2016 // PUBLIC GAMING INTERNATIONAL //
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ited but so are your profits. In Camelot’s
case, we take less than 1% in profit. This
ensures that the lottery fulfils its intended
purpose—to raise as much money as pos-
sible for its beneficiaries, not the people
running it. So, off the back of this ini-
tial response, we look forward to further
engaging with the Government and our
regulator, the Gambling Commission, in
their ongoing investigations in this area.
Off the back of that, it seems Camelot has
done a lot of work recently trying to make
UK players more aware of the organizations
that benefit from National Lottery funding.
Is this a direct reaction to the infringement
of these “competitors?” Can you tell me more
about this strategy and why you consider it to
be important?
A. Duncan:
Although it’s not a direct
reaction to the increased competition, I
think it’s fair to say that the heightened
environment has made us increasingly
keen to make people aware of the life-
changing difference they make by buying
a National Lottery product. We launched
our ‘Play Makes It Possible’ marketing
campaign some time ago and then fol-
lowed this up last year with our new Na-
tional Lottery brand identity. The new
branding puts the iconic National Lottery
‘crossed fingers’—which is recognised by
95% of the UK adult population—at the
heart of every game logo. This is designed
to help raise consumer awareness of the
full range of games offered by The Na-
tional Lottery, as well as reinforce the
life-changing role each of them plays in
creating millionaires and delivering over
£34 million every single week to Good
Causes. It’s the dual winning—through
prizes paid to winners and grants paid
to beneficiaries—that we really want to
communicate.
Our winners’ calls—that moment
when someone rings the National Lottery
Line and has it confirmed that they are
now a millionaire—have been fantasti-
cally successful. They uniquely capture
the exhilaration of a transformational
win. These pieces of audio brilliantly re-
flect our brand purpose in a way scripted
advertising can’t. And for Mother’s Day
last year, we worked with the charity
Home-Start, which helps support fami-
lies, to surprise one of their volunteers
of 15 years—a wonderful 80-year-old
called Edna. We created an emotive two-
minute video a few days before Mother’s
Day and then ensured that it played in
cinemas over the weekend, as well as on
our owned and earned media platforms.
It also got incredible traction across social
media, with more than 2.2 million views
over three days.
As lottery operators, we are in a unique
position in the respect that we truly make
a huge difference through National Lot-
tery funding for beneficiaries. In our case,
that’s over 450,000 projects that have
benefited—it would be folly not to use
that to our full advantage.
■
sports betting involves a global coop-
eration of all jurisdictions. And there is
not just the policies and regulations that
need to be determined. There is also the
matter of enforcing those regulations in
the global environment.
The effort in Europe to prevent the ma-
nipulation of sports competitions is con-
certed and massive and being organized in
large part by the GLMS (Global Lottery
Monitoring System for Sports Betting).
The main objectives are to first detect, then
sanction, then ultimately prevent national
or trans-national manipulation of national
and international sports competitions. To
achieve that end, we are actively promot-
ing an international cooperation against
manipulation of sports competition be-
tween the gaming and regulatory authori-
ties, the sporting organizations, and the
operators of sports betting. This kind of
international collaboration to construct
systems and multi-national agreements to
enforce the laws is a new concept, a new
frontier for our industry. That is why 27
lotteries from around the world have come
together to create a national platform for
addressing manipulation of sports compe-
titions. This national platform shall serve
as an information hub, collecting and dis-
seminating information to the betting op-
erators, sports organizations, and regula-
tory and law enforcement authorities. The
GLMS will receive, organize, and analyze
information on irregular or suspicious bet-
ting patterns, and transmit this informa-
tion on possible infringements of law to
relevant authorities.
Information that is captured by individ-
ual stakeholders, like sports organizations,
regulators, and operators, typically does
not yield enough insight to be meaningful
by itself. It is when information is gath-
ered from multiple sources that it becomes
useful. That is when betting patterns are
revealed that are not discernable when the
bets are viewed in isolation. That is why
the mission to protect integrity in sports
depends on international cooperation,
and the services of GLMS.
The manner and methods in which
we conduct this service must also respect
the confidentiality of sources, clients,
and players alike. Our activities geared
towards protection and prevention of il-
legality must also align with all the laws
of individual nations. Cooperation with
agents of law enforcement requires us to
understand and operate within the con-
straints of due process that form the bases
Thierry Pujol Interview
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