The Herald Sun yesterday ran another negative Intralot story as is their want. Intralot Action CEO issues a statement to the retail network to clarify their position.
My view is that the state government seriously botched the handling of the Intralot licence by not addressing the dedicated area committed in retail outlets for Tattersalls products. That said, Intralot has not done themselves any favours with slow equipment and unpopular online games except for keno which is improving. Their advertising of scratchie products is working a treat.
I don’t see it as a negative story when they’re simply reporting the facts. I don’t like these stories being published as it only gives the public even less confidence in the intralot product which doesn’t help our cause but at the same time i can understand why they’re printed. The splitting of the licenses was meant to create tens/hundreds of millions for our health system and given that number fell massively short the public have a right to know what a monumental stuff up this whole debacle has been and what they’re missing out on.
Personally i think Intralot are blaming far too much of their woes on not having access to the Tatts dedicated area and reckon it’s a bit of a cop out in all honesty. While i agree it never helped thier’s or our cause from the start, the company has been around for 2 now and i think scratchie sales are the least of our worries and having the Tatts dedicated area been accessible from the start they’d still be tens of millions off projected targets. Their biggest mistake by far was messing around with a proven and popular product in Keno and i dare say if they kept it exactly the same they and we would be much much better off.
Credit where it’s due though, IMO Intralot have worked very hard to turn around their fortunes after such a disasterous start and have taken many positive steps to rectify the mistakes they made. In saying that though it’s hard not to though that the horse has already bolted. As for our sales, comparing our commissions we made as opposed to terminal/delivery fees etc we made around a $170 loss overall last year, this year looking at our numbers we’re $252 up so it’s turned around slightly. That of course doesn’t include our initial $10k we paid out to sell Intralot but we resigned ourselves a long time ago to losing that as we know we’ll never see it again.
After 12 years my husband and i have decided to sell up and get out of the newsagents game completely. The vast majority of our experiences have been so rewarding and we don’t regret it for a second our time in the industry. The only 2 things that have left a bitter taste in our mouths were the Bill Express fiasco and unfortunately Intralot has now joined that list.
Couldn’t agree more with your comments Steph. Not sure why there is a dig at the report yet Intralot’s statement passes unchallenged. Reality is Intralot has been a disaster from the start despite all the promises.
Intralot HAS been a disaster from the beginning…..and it looks like because of their incompetence we are going to have to suffer once again.
Why are Intralot so quiet on the rumoured ‘scratchie only’ outlets? ($2000.00 gets you a licence for scratchies); or the rumoured licence given to supermarkets to sell scratchies instore at Coles, Safeway and IGA? Did the supermarkets actually pay a substantial fee for these products?
If the above is happening as i have been advised; newsagents have once again been screwed over in the name of profit!
If the above is happening, newsagents should wash there hands of Intralot and put the final nail in the coffin.
I notice that Intralot are using the screens in our store to raise advertising revenue, whould we be getting any of these dollars since the screens are in our stores?