SBC News Voice of the Sports Betting Industry
Morten Eriksen the executive tasked with leading the ‘Lotteries Entertainment Innovation Alliance – LEIA’, a strategic joint-venture formed by Danske Spil (DEN), Française des Jeux (FRA), Norsk Tipping (NOR) and Veikkaus (FIN) has detailed further insights on the JV’s foundations and ambitions which aims to disrupt the global lottery scene.
This week, a first of its kind strategic initiative was formed by the Four European legacy gambling/lottery groups, stating their intent to develop new lottery consumer propositions, running alongside enhanced product ranges whilst further supported by dynamic real-time lottery management systems.
The tough mandate has been charged to Morten Eriksen, the former Norsk Tipping VP of Distribution, who now leads the European lottery sector’s most ambitious directive in years
“With changing customer behaviour, digital growth and increased competition, this is one of the most exciting initiatives I have seen during my time in the lottery and gaming industries,” Eriksen tells SBC.
Tasked with delivering much-needed innovation and fresh thinking to stagnant lottery formats, Eriksen details that LEIA will initially focus on ‘multiple game development initiatives’, based on shared resources and values of the founding partners.
“ This will create an opportunity to develop games and products that also exploit prize liquidity from the collective customer pool in the participating countries.”
Questioned on potential expansions and new partnerships, Eriksen confirms that dependent on the success of LEIA’s initial JV products, this may leading to an opening of its collaborative framework for other European lottery stakeholders.
‘The Parties may include other parties to the Joint Venture based on a unanimous decision by the Shareholders. Considering the overall objective of the Joint Venture, the Parties will only include companies which qualify as Contracting Authorities, sharing the same goals as the Parties and duly authorised to operate gambling activities in their respective jurisdictions’ LEIA details to SBC.
