From the front window to the sales counter, there is no missing the promotion of Tattersalls products at 7-eleven stores in Victoria. The pitch is aggressive, multi-faceted and co-branded. It demonstrates the importance 7-Eleven and Tattersalls place on their new relationship.
At the front of 7-Eleven stores are generic as well as game based window posters. In store, there are promotional flyers above the counter and a counter mat pitching the various ticket offers for each game. All co-branded Tattersalls and 7-Eleven.
You cannot shop in a 7-Eleven store and miss the Tattersalls pitch – even where there is a full-service Tattersalls outlet next door.
When Tattersalls told us they were making this move they said it would not impact existing outlets because 7-Eleven stores attract a different market. 7-Eleven is using the arrival of Tattersalls product to lure new customers, newsagency customers. Newsagents next to 7-Eleven outlets would often remain open late on a Saturday to service Tattersalls customers. If the 7-Eleven pitch works they will lose customers and money and probably end up closing earlier.
Tattersalls co-branding with 7-Eleven rubs salt into the wound of existing outlets given that Tattersalls refused to permit co-branding with newsagent marketing groups in the past.
While I am all for competition, it must be fair. The relationship Tattersalls has agreed with 7-Eleven is unfair to newsagents and other existing Tattersalls outlets. From what I saw yesterday, it provides 7-Eleven with an unfair competitive advantage. It does this while Tattersalls continues to hold us back and shackle us with loss generating overheads such as the scratch ticket bays.
We are threatened with losing Tattersalls products if we put non Tattersalls products in these scratch ticket bays. This prime counter space sits idle, losing revenue while Tattersalls bends the rules for 7-Eleven. Tattersalls some months ago represented that they expected to win the right to sell instant scratch tickets again and that this is why the scratch ticket bay real estate ought to be preserved. They did not win yet the prime real-estate sits idle, not earning what it could for us. And in the meantime Tattersalls is energetically developing a new retail network.
Of course, through all of this, the Victorian Government remains silent. They created this problem and have refused to accept any responsibility for the cost of their poor policy decision to hundreds of Victorian family businesses. They will say they have asked Tattersalls to treat their retailers fairly in terms of the scratch ticket bays but have not gone beyond asking.
