Fortuna Entertainment Group (FEG), the Prague- and Warsaw-listed fixed-odds betting operator, has announced that it will launch its own lottery project three months ahead of schedule due to significant interest by operators of existing lottery terminals, particularly Greece’s Intralot. All this takes place in the wake of the financial mess of Sazka, FEG is picking up the slack with Sazka’s former partners.
“It is already clear that we won’t be able to satisfy the extremely high initial demand, and we will have to choose the most appropriate vendors, regardless of whether they were previously Sazka partners or not,” Martin Illner, General Director of Fortuna Lottery, said in a statement posted on the FEB website.
“We categorically deny any allegations about cooperation of any sort with Sazka. No such cooperation or other agreements exist. We have no time for such games and distractions, we are working full speed to launch our lottery game and other services on time as promised,” Illner added in the statement.
Sazka filed for bankruptcy last month in Prague. The company had insufficient capital to pay its January jackpot and missed a March 10 deadline to payback claims held by 26 creditors.
FEG plans the commercial sale of its scratch tickets to start in May while numerical lottery games will be launched in July/August, beginning with 1,000 online terminals wit lottery game and mobile phone top ups.
“We look forward to negotiations with all interested vendors, and we are pleased to be able to offer them long-term mutually beneficial contractual terms even before our terminals are physically ready,” Illner said. “We will have additional 1,000 plus terminals by the end of 2011, and even more in the following years.”
