EUROPEAN STATE LOTTERIES AND TOTO ASSOCIATION

ELISE
18
European Lotteries
Information Sharing Extended
The need for aggregated quality data
on Lotteries
“Do we have the data we need to support
key messages about Lotteries in the
European Union?” asked the business intelligence
people at Veikkaus, the Finnish
national Lottery, at the beginning of
2007. Could we, for example, state with
accuracy the amount of money provided
by Lotteries in the EU for societies in the
form of taxes or money for good causes
last year? Or could we tell whether sales
have dropped or increased over the last
five years?
In spite of the number of questionnaires
each Lottery deals with every year the
answer was “No, not really”. Each Lottery,
of course, has a very good and accurate
picture of the situation in its own
jurisdiction. However, stakeholders outside
the sector often want an aggregated
snapshot. Data should be grouped meaningfully
and summarized at appropriate
levels to give an overall picture based
on accurate details where, for example,
comparisons between jurisdictions are
easily made.
Information Professionals Working Seminar
In December 2008 or at the latest February 2009 a Seminar
on Info Sharing will be organised.
The Lotteries who are interested to host this workshop are kindly invited
to contact the Secretariat General
P AN RAMA
ELISE
Such aggregated comparable data are
necessary to have a meaningful and fact
based policy discussion both nationally
and regionally. The latest aggregated
snapshots are from the Swiss Institute of
Comparative Law in its “Study of Gambling
Services in the internal market of
the European Union”, June 2006 and
“The Case for State Lotteries” by London
Economics from September 2006. However,
data in these reports are five years
old and apply different terms for measuring
the economic activities of Lotteries.
Both reports underlined the need for better
data and this is exactly what ELISE is
all about.
From data to key messages
Grapes and wine are obviously not the
same. You make good wine from grapes
harvested at the right time and from
the right fields; matured under constant
surveillance by oenologists and bottled
and served at the right temperature in
the right glass. Likewise, data is not the
same as information. You make good information
by first choosing and defining
the data you need to support the message
you want to give. Then you collect
the data. Thirdly, you control the data
and make sure they can be meaningfully
aggregated and finally you paint the aggregated
picture and deliver your key
messages.
ELISE so far
To define which “grapes” should be collected
from which “vineyards” and how
the storage and “fermentation process”
should be handled, EL and Veikkaus arranged
a two day workshop in Helsinki in
February 2007. Some 30 lottery business
intelligence experts discussed the framework
and gave a small group of people
the mandate to compile a new questionnaire
which, for a start, could replace the
general annual EL questionnaire.
The group defined the data they wanted
and for each data entry a small explanation
was added to make sure that everyone
would understand the same reading,
for example “Gross Gambling Revenue” or
“Number Game”. The “harvest” was done
by EL which sent out the questionnaire