Monday, March 10, 2014

Ogames - Online Lottery in Sri Lanka

Ogames or Rapido is the first goverment authorized Online Lottery in Sri Lanka

Oceanic Games private online lottery introduced in Lanka

A private company with foreign connections has been given a licence to operate an online lottery including thousands of e-Games terminals from next month – a move that could draw young people, including schoolchildren into gaming. The licence has been given to Oceanic Games (Private) Limited which will operate in collaboration with eGame Solutions, a Hong Kong-based company which markets itself as a global lottery provider.

Apart from the Government-owned Development Lotteries Board (DLB) and National Lotteries Board (NLB) which operate here, Oceanic Games (Private) Limited is the only private concern that has been given a licence to operate in Sri Lanka. Cabinet approval has been granted for the operation of the online lottery which will operate under the brand name Ogames and will make available to the Sri Lankan public games such as lotto, one of the most popular lottery games in the world.

A senior Government source who wished to remain anonymous expressed fears that with lottery operation being privatised, the NLB and the DLB would be hit. Last year the NLB made a profit of more than Rs. 14.5 billion and this year the profit is expected to increase to around Rs. 20 billion.He also said the online lottery in Sri Lanka would be detrimental as it would attract young people, including schoolchildren.

The Sunday Times learns that Oceanic Games is backed by a Malaysian owned company which is incorporated in Sri Lanka and operates as a leading stockbroker here. It has been alleged that this Malaysian company is attempting to acquire 100 perches of land in Colombo to operate from and is using Oceanic Games as a front company to avoid paying the taxes levied on foreign owned companies on lease of land.

Meanwhile eGame Solutions in a statement on its official website said that in the initial phase of the project, it would be targeting 3,000 points of sales to equip with eGame lottery terminals.  “We are glad to kick start this fun and meaningful lottery to the Sri Lanka market. I believe this project with Oceanic will be appealing to the Sri Lanka market given our scalable modular support for gaming operations. After the official launch in Quarter One (Q1,) we will expand our scale of operations and lottery profile to a wider range of games and channels,” the website quotes eGame Solutions Chief Executive Officer Gary Cheung as saying.

It added that Oceanic would provide funding support to the local Mahapola Higher Education Scholarship Trust Fund (MHESTF) to help needy local youths to further their education.

Meanwhile, Online National Lotteries (ONL), a newly formed company fully owned by the National Lotteries Board of Sri Lanka, will introduce the concept of online lotteries to the country. The project will be managed by the well-known international organization, Norsk Tipping, a Norwegian government-owned lottery organization. Online lotteries will consist of a network of terminals connected to a central server that will run these lottery games. Operators will sell tickets to the public via the terminal and will pay out winnings up to a certain extent. While ONL will provide dealers with all the necessary equipment, the terminals will initially be placed in strategic locations in Colombo and its suburbs.‘Rapido', the first of these online games, will be launched in March 2004 and is the first in a string of new and innovative games that will be introduced. Part of the proceeds will be directed to the Parliamentary Scholarship Fund.

Plans call for installation of roughly 1200 terminals in retail and social establishments. It is planned that the revenues generated will be divided 50% for prizes, 25% as a contribution to the Parliamentary Scholarship Fund, 18% for operating expenses and 7% as a commission to the retailer hosts of the terminals. Norsk Tipping will be operating under budgets and plans developed jointly, approved and monitored by NLB. 

As a gesture of goodwill and in order to get off to a good start, the Norwegian Student Loan Fund has pledged to support the Parliamentary Scholarship Fund and provide opportunities to needy Sri Lankan students to study in Norway. 

The objective of NLB and Norsk Tipping is to build the Sri Lankan online lottery into a highly efficient and profitable organisation generating consistently high levels of revenues. A country-wide system of terminals connected to a data center may also be of interest for use by other Sri Lankan lotteries, a possibility the NLB may be willing to entertain. Other private sector or government administrative uses could possibly be developed and implemented over such a network which will be a new element in Sri Lanka's ICT infrastructure. 

A feature of the NLB electronic lottery will be that it would be aimed at the more affluent middle class as each ticket will be priced at Rs. 30 and therefore will not compete with existing lotteries which are all priced at Rs. 10 per ticket. 

Norsk Tipping is qualified to perform such activities having had a 55 year operating history and current revenues of 1.4 billion US dollars. A wide variety of games are offered  ranging from lotto to keno and bingo to football and other sports. 


1 comment:

  1. Been playing online lottery and online bingo for a long time now but I'm thankful I haven't been receiving any of this email scam.
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