Italian lottery outfit Lottomatica Group has prevailed in its court fight against Italian gaming regulator Amministrazione Autonoma dei Monopoli di Stato (AAMS), assuring the company’s local Lotto concession will continue until 2016. In 2005, AAMS had claimed that Lottomatica’s concession expired on April 17, 2012, but an arbitration committee put the date at June 8, 2016. AAMS appealed, but the Rome Court of Appeal sided with Lottomatica. Happy days for the lottery provider, as the Italian market provided two-thirds of its revenues last year.
In the UK, National Lottery operator Camelot’s war against its Health Lottery competitor continues unabated. The Health Lottery, launched last fall by media mogul Richard Desmond, has come under attack over its structure as a loose association of 51 local society lotteries, each run by a separate community interest company. Camelot says this is intended to skirt 2005 Gambling Act regulations – and the 12p per ticket duty – applied to UK-spanning lotteries like the one run by Camelot. Camelot has also taken issue with the Health Lottery’s comparatively puny charitable contributions (20% v. the National Lottery’s 28%). Now that mere bluster has failed, the Independent reports that Camelot has sent the Gambling Commission a sternly worded letter, threatening a judicial review of the regulator unless the Health Lottery is shut down. A Gambling Commission spokesman said it was considering Camelot’s letter, while a Health Lottery spokesman retorted that there was “nothing new” in Camelot’s arguments, which were “without merit.”
Holy sherbet… The not-quite-ice-cream frozen dessert is being credited with helping a Rhode Island woman score the third-largest jackpot in Powerball history. Louise White, 81, was at home making a sandwich when a family member announced he was going out for sherbet. Louise went along, stopping off at a Powerball ticket counter along the way. That night, she discovered she was holding a $336.4m winner, which she promptly stuck between the pages of her Bible. (Because, you know, God loves gambling so much.) In the morning, Louise and her now-desecrated Good Book headed on down to the lottery office, where Louise opted for a lump-sum payment of $210m. We suspect Louise wasn’t convinced she’d live long enough to collect the same amount via annual payouts. Well, of course she wouldn’t, not with a vengeful Jehovah about to smite her with boils and locusts and such…
