Record Lotteries Sales

The New Zealand Lotteries Commission expects record sales of over $640 million for the current financial year ending on 30 June, and is predicting a rise to $645 million for next year.

In its Statement of Intent, released today, the Commission said at least $135 million would be paid to the New Zealand Lottery Grants Board in the current financial year, as budgeted, and also in the following year.

The results were attributable to the success of a new Saturday advertising strategy for Lotto, the continued success of TeleBingo, a turnaround in Instant Kiwi sales, and also success in containing costs. A one-off reduced charge for GST had been a contributing factor too.

Expenditure for the current year will be slightly below the budget of $43.3 million.

The Commission noted in its report that the upgrade of its gaming system, including hardware, software and communications technology, had been completed successfully and that the new system was faster and more reliable.

By the end of June, the Commission expected to have conducted integrated tests of all its systems and be fully Year 2000 compliant, although it acknowledged that dependence on other organisations meant "no-one has complete control of their destiny in achieving Year 2000 compliance". Accordingly, the Commission had paid attention to contingency planning as a major part of its Y2K programme.

Plans for the coming year included completing the trial of self- service Lotto terminals in supermarket checkout aisles. However, the project would go ahead only if the trial met with customer approval and also satisfied the Commission's return on investment criteria.

ENDS....

MEDIA RELEASE FROM NEW ZEALAND LOTTERIES COMMISSION

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