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newsagency

Here’s why I think plenty of newsagents are done with diaries from the magazine distributor

It’s diary and calendar season. For years this was a strong time of year for newsagents. We used to love it, because we didn’t know any better.

It still can be. But I’m seeing more and more newsagents ignore diaries and calendars supplied through the magazine distributor. They’re giving the space to other products, and to diaries they buy direct.

I don’t blame them one bit.

Half the margin, same amount of work

Good diaries from direct supply arrangements can earn you around 60% margin.

Diaries and calendars through the magazine distribution model earn half that. Sometimes less.

Then there’s the time. Product arrives on the distributor’s schedule. Someone has to check it in, display it, and later process returns. That’s labour you pay for, on a product that earns you half the margin.

When you have limited space and limited hours, the choice is easy. You back the products that pay you properly – products over which you have supply control.

This is financial disrespect

I think the magazine distribution model for diaries and calendars disrespects newsagents.

It treats your shop as shelf space to fill. Your business needs a return on that space, and the model doesn’t seem to care whether you get one. It asks you to give prime seasonal space, staff time and counter support to products that pay you a fraction of what the alternatives do.

Newsagents have noticed. That’s why these products aren’t getting the space and support they once did. That’s a sensible business decision, nothing more complicated than that.

What I’d do in your shop

  • Compare the margin on distributor-supplied diaries with what you make from direct suppliers. Your POS software will tell you. Your gut might not.
  • Your seasonal space is some of the most valuable you have. Work out what each metre earns, and give the best spots to whatever earns most.
  • Put direct-supply diaries and calendars up front and promote them.
  • You don’t have to give your best space to a product that earns half the margin and costs you time. Cut it back, or say no.

If a product pays half as much and takes the same work, it shouldn’t get your best space.

To publishers: take note

If you publish diaries or calendars and reach newsagents through the magazine distributor, this part is for you.

Newsagents are done with this financial disrespect. Low margin product, delivered through a model built for magazines, will keep losing space to suppliers who pay retailers properly.

If you want newsagents to back your product, pay them a margin that makes it worth their while, and deal with them directly. I think you’ll find plenty will give your diaries and calendars the space they used to.

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Newsagency management

Do you want to sell more greeting cards or not?

Greeting cards are the most profitable product in a newsagency, yet too many retailers ignore them, expecting the supplier to do the work. Well, supper not doing the most important work needed – they are not working at growing demand for cards.

What are you doing to get more people buying cards?

For most retailers, the honest answer is not enough. It’s nothing in fact. If that’s you, you’re part of the problem.

We fill the fixture. Actually, many newsagents don’t – they let the supplier do this. We reorder. Actually, many don’t – they let the supplier do this too. We wait. We act as if growth will come by itself. It won’t.

Card sales grow when retailers work at them every day. That means doing things differently.

Host events in-store

Give people a reason to come in and spend time with cards.

  • Card-writing evenings before Christmas, Mother’s Day and Father’s Day.
  • A young guys event where they are trained how to choose a card, and maybe have a beer with you.
  • Hand-lettering or calligraphy sessions with a local artist.

Events build the habit. They also bring people into your shop who might not otherwise visit.

Educate people

Many people don’t buy cards because they don’t know what to write, or they’ve never seen why it matters.

Many people don’t know when to send a card.

Teach them. Post tips on social media about what to write. Put a small guide near the fixture. Talk about why a card lasts for years when a text message is gone in a minute. Speak to local schools and community groups. SHow off your most unique cards.

If we don’t explain the value of a card, nobody else will.

Stock cards younger people want

Your range has to appeal to people in their 20s and 30s. That means humour, pop culture, clean modern designs, local artists and blank cards that let the sender speak for themselves.

If your range only suits your oldest customers, your card business will shrink with them.

Stop displaying cards the old way

This is the big one.

For decades we have displayed cards the same way. A long wall of pockets, sorted by occasion and relationship. Row after row. It looks like every other card fixture in the country.

Younger shoppers find it overwhelming and dated. It is time to stop.

  • Display face out on tables and smaller stands.
  • Group cards by style or mood, not just by occasion.
  • Put cards with gifts, so the card and the present are bought together.
  • Create feature spaces that change often and give shoppers something new to see.

Make the change

None of this is hard. All of it takes effort.

The retailers who do the work will grow their card sales. Those who keep doing what they have always done will keep getting the same result, or worse.

Choose one change now. Do it.

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Greeting Cards

Change your newsagency without losing the people who matter most

“If I change my business too much, my regulars will stop coming. Soon I won’t have a shop.”

I hear this often. It is a common feeling, and it comes from a good place. You care about your customers. You know their names and what they buy. You do not want to let them down.

We all like what we know. We like the space where we feel comfortable. That is human.

Plenty has already changed

Change has been happening in your shop for years. It is easy to miss because it happens slowly, a little each week.

Over-the-counter newspaper sales keep declining. Most magazine titles are declining too. The exception is special interest titles, which continue to do well. Lottery customers are moving online. The shoppers coming through your door today are not quite the same as those of ten years ago.

So the question is not whether to change. The change is already underway. The real question is whether you guide it, or let it guide you.

You do not have to choose between old and new

Changing your newsagency does not mean turning your back on your regulars. You can make the shop fresh and relevant to today, while keeping the products and services that matter in your location.

That might mean keeping your newspapers near the counter, while giving more floor space to categories that are growing. It might mean keeping the special interest magazines your customers love, and trimming titles that no longer sell.

Your regulars are more likely to stay when the shop feels busy and alive. New shoppers bring energy. Energy brings everyone back.

This is why I say there is no single approach. Every shop, every town and every community is different. What works in a regional main street will differ from what works in a city shopping centre.

What we do know

There is no coming back for the newsagency channel. There will be no return to the days of around 5,000 shops that looked almost the same.

That is not a reason to worry. It is a reason to plan.

The growth categories are clear based on the evidence we have:

  • Gifts
  • Collectibles
  • Play, including toys, games and jigsaws
  • Clothing
  • Books

These are easy categories for newsagents to add, with the right backing. You already have the skills. You know your customers, you know retail and you know your community.

You do not have to do this alone

Yep, this is a pitch. I am a Director of Stride Retail Pty Ltd. It helps newsagents transform. Yes, we changed the name of the newsXpress Pty Ltd business to Stride Retail Pty Ltd last month as our own distancing of the newsXpress business from the newsagency channel.

We can look at your shop, your location and your current range with you. We can help you work out what to keep, what to grow and what to try. We do this at a pace that suits you and your customers.

Change works best one careful step at a time. Start with one small step this month. Your regulars will come along with you.

Reach out: help@newsxpress.com.au

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newsagency of the future

GNS Board votes to sell the business to management, and newsagents should read the message carefully

On 7 October, the Board of GNS Wholesale announced it had agreed for its operating business and assets to be sold to a company owned by CEO Paul Yardley. Shareholders still need to approve the deal. Completion is expected in the fourth quarter of 2026.

This is not a crisis, and I do not see it as one. It is a sensible step for a business facing structural change. For newsagents, though, the announcement deserves more than a quick read.

What the announcement says

The Board is plain about the market. It says office supplies and stationery have been “changing structurally for several years” as digitisation reduces demand. GNS has responded by diversifying into new products, customers and channels. Its current corporate structure limits access to new capital, so the Board looked at its options and chose a management buy-out.

My side note here would be that GNS has failed to lean Ito the growth in stationery that we are seeing stationery for pen collectors, avid journalers, paper collectors. Shops like Choosing Keeping in Londan and Paper Tigre in Paris have lead the way. I suspect GNS did not lean into this because its customers did not. Millgram in Australia stated there, but it feels adrift right now.

Paul Yardley talks about serving “independent retailers and commercial resellers”. He talks about a broader range, more efficient operations, taking cost out of the supply chain and growth “through consolidation where it creates value”.

The word newsagent does not appear once.

Why this matters for newsagents

I am not criticising GNS. Its leadership is doing what good businesses do. It is reading the market, accepting decline in traditional categories and moving towards where future revenue will come from.

That is exactly what I have been urging newsagents to do. I have written before about the need to decouple from the newsagency channel. Our businesses can no longer rely on suppliers, structures and categories that were built around the traditional newsagency model. Those foundations are shifting, and they will keep shifting.

When a key supplier to our channel says its future lies in diversification and a wider customer base, it confirms the direction of travel. Suppliers are adapting. Newsagents need to adapt too.

What I suggest you do now

  • Review your floor space. Look at sales and margin per square metre. Give more space to categories that are growing and earning good margin.
  • Look at your supplier mix. Do not rely on one wholesaler for a whole category. Explore direct relationships and newer suppliers.
  • Reduce reliance on declining categories. Magazines, newspapers and traditional stationery will keep shrinking. Plan your space for that now.
  • Build on gifts and destination categories. Greeting cards, gifts and specialist ranges give shoppers a reason to visit and a reason to come back.
  • Think about how shoppers see you. A shop known for curated gifts and local service has a stronger future than one defined by a legacy channel.

A calm and practical response

Change in our supply chain is not new. What is new is how clearly the change is being spelt out. The GNS announcement is honest about the market. I think we should be equally honest about our own businesses.

The newsagents who will thrive are those who evolve on their own terms. Start that work today.

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newsagency of the future

The surcharge ban is not why prices are going up

Turn on the news or scroll social media and you will see the claim that businesses are lifting prices because they can no longer surcharge card payments.

That is not what is happening.

Look at what small business retailers are facing in 2026:

  • Labour costs are up 5% this year.
  • Rent is up 5%, often more, this year.
  • Insurance is up 10%, often more, this year.
  • Energy is up 10% and more this year.
  • Freight to land stock in-store is up between 25% and 100% this year.

Every one of these feeds into a price decision. And every one of these has increased this year.

Labour and rent are the biggest costs in a retail business. Together they often make up more than 25% of total costs. When both rise in the same year, most shops cannot absorb it.

Then there is freight. Shoppers never see it. But if it costs a third more, or double, to get a carton of greeting cards or gifts onto the shelf, that cost has to go somewhere.

None of these costs arrive on their own. A retailer might wear a rent increase one year and an insurance jump the next. In 2026 they all landed at once. Most independent shops run on thin margins, and there is only so much a business owner can cut from rostering or trading hours before customers notice. At some point the price on the shelf has to move.

Losing the surcharge does cost retailers money. I accept that. It is still the smallest of the factors behind any price rise I have seen this year.

The news outlets running the surcharge story are showing how little they understand about running a shop. It’s lazy reporting.

if you’re a journalist and prepping a story on the removal of the  EFTPOS surcharge and its impact on price rises, do your job – ask questions, find out what is really driving price increases.

I have spent more than 40 years working with independent retailers. I have not met one who lifts prices without thinking hard about how customers will react.

My advice to retailers is simple. Know your cost increases line by line, so that when a customer asks why something costs more, you can give them a straight answer.

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Newsagency management

Five Australian inventions that changed the world, now on coins

This coin release that’s exclusive to newsXpress is also packed with education opportunities since each coin shines a light on an Aussie invention. Schools are loving the educational aspect of this.

Retailers have been provided with educational material to compliment the coins – giving students excellent learning materials.

The stump jump plough, 1876

In the 1870s, South Australian farmers were trying to plough land full of mallee stumps. Rigid ploughs stopped dead or snapped, and digging stumps out by hand cost more than the land was worth.

Then a bolt broke on Richard Bowyer Smith’s plough near Kalkabury on Yorke Peninsula. The loose blade lifted over a hidden root and dropped back into the soil. Richard and his brother Clarence turned that accident into a plough with hinged blades that rode over obstacles and kept cutting.

Farmers laughed at first. The plough went on to open up millions of hectares across South Australia, Victoria and New South Wales. The stump jump principle is still used on farm machinery today.

The jaffle maker, 1949

Hot sandwiches had one problem. The filling dripped out the sides.

In 1949, Bondi doctor Ernest Smithers registered a design for an iron that sealed the edges of the bread and locked the filling inside. He also coined the name: the jaffle. By the early 1950s, Australia had jaffle fever.

In 1974 Breville took the idea electric. Its Snack’n’Sandwich toaster sold 400,000 units in its first year, and in Britain toasted sandwiches became known as “brevilles”.

The black box flight recorder, 1956

When planes crashed in the early 1950s, investigators often had little more than wreckage to work with. David Warren, a chemist at the Aeronautical Research Laboratories in Melbourne, had lost his father in an unexplained air crash in 1934.

He proposed a crash-protected cockpit recorder, and by 1956 his team had a working prototype. Australian authorities rejected it. The British took it up instead, and in 1960 Australia became the first country to make cockpit voice recorders compulsory.

Today every large passenger aircraft carries two recorders. They are painted bright orange so searchers can find them.

The baby safety capsule, 1984

Newborns once rode home from hospital on a parent’s lap or in a loose carrycot. Adelaide seatbelt engineers Bob Heath and Colin Nagel changed that.

Their Safe-n-Sound capsule, launched in 1984, held the baby facing backwards and lying flat. In a crash, the bassinet pivoted so the force spread across the baby’s whole back rather than its neck. Rear-facing travel for babies is now standard advice around the world.

WLAN, 1992

In the early 1990s, indoor radio signals bounced off walls and garbled fast data. CSIRO engineer John O’Sullivan had earlier built signal-cleaning tools while searching for exploding black holes. The black holes never appeared, but he and his team realised the same maths could fix indoor wireless.

CSIRO patented the method in 1992. It became part of the Wi-Fi standards used worldwide and earned more than $430 million for Australian research.

The coins

The collection includes eight designs:

  • $1 Stump Jump Plough
  • $1 Jaffle Maker
  • $1 Black Box Flight Recorder
  • $1 Coloured Black Box Flight Recorder
  • $1 Baby Safety Capsule
  • $1 WLAN
  • $2 Bright Ideas coin, featuring all five inventions
  • $2 Bright Ideas proof coin

Shop the Bright Ideas collection at Mint Coin Shop

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newsagency marketing

From jaffles to flight recorders: newsXpress celebrates Australia’s Bright Ideas

Today, newsXpress and the Royal Australian Mint launch the 2026 Bright Ideas coin collection. It celebrates five Australian inventions that have become part of everyday life here and around the world.

Five inventions, five stories

The collection features:

  • The stump jump plough
  • The jaffle maker
  • The baby safety capsule
  • The black box flight recorder
  • High-speed Wireless LAN (WLAN) technology

Together, they span more than a century of Australian innovation. South Australian Richard Smith patented the stump jump plough in 1876. Defence scientist Dr David Warren invented the black box flight recorder in 1953. CSIRO developed high-speed WLAN technology in the 1990s. The jaffle maker and the baby safety capsule went on to become familiar parts of Australian life.

Each invention started with someone who saw a problem and set out to solve it. A farmer needed a plough that could handle stumps and roots. Air crash investigators needed to know what happened in the final moments of a flight. Scientists wanted faster wireless connections. These are practical, down-to-earth ideas, and that is what makes them so Australian. Bright Ideas puts those stories in people’s hands, on coins they can keep or share with family.

What I like about this collection is that people can relate to it. Most of us have made a jaffle, used wireless technology or travelled with a child in a safety capsule. Few of us know the Australian story behind them.

A special $2 Bright Ideas coin featuring all five inventions is going into circulation. Customers paying with cash at participating newsXpress stores could find one in their change from 8:30am AEDT today, Thursday 8 October 2026.

There is something a little bit special about finding a commemorative coin in your change. I expect plenty of customers will be checking theirs over the coming weeks.

Participating newsXpress stores also stock the Bright Ideas collector range:

  • A five-coin collection presented as a folder for the coins and coins in a tube
  • A seven-coin collection – presented in a beautiful collector box
  • A $2 proof coin – in box

The full set of designs is:

  • $1 Stump Jump Plough
  • $1 Black Box Flight Recorder
  • $1 Jaffle Maker
  • $1 Baby Safety Capsule
  • $1 WLAN
  • $1 Coloured Black Box Flight Recorder
  • $2 Bright Ideas circulating coin
  • $2 Bright Ideas proof coin

A local celebration

newsXpress stores are part of their local communities. Bright Ideas gives each of them the chance to share a little Australian history and ingenuity with their customers, one coin at a time.

Visit your local participating newsXpress store and check your change. You could find a Bright Ideas $2 coin. Find Bright Ideas retailers here and see what retailers working together looks like: https://www.newsxpress.com.au/stockists/brightideas

This program, exclusive to newsXpress, will drive net new traffic to participating stores.

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Newsagency opportunities

Your sales data has answers. Are you asking the questions?

Most newsagencies are sitting on years of sales history that’s not used.

Picture two newsagencies in neighbouring suburbs. Similar size, similar mix, similar rent.

In the first, the owner spends a slow afternoon behind the counter, then reorders whatever sold last month.

In the second, the owner exports uses AI to create orders based on what’s selling over time. They also use AI to spot trends and look for allied products. They then cull products and suppliers that aren’t performing.

The second business is growing net profit while the first one is treading water.

be like the second newsagent. Smart. Making fact based decisions. Chasing profit.

Questions worth starting with

  • Show me my top 20 and bottom 20 products by gross profit, not by sales.
  • In which weeks of the year do I regularly run short on cards?
  • Here is my roster and my hourly sales. When am I overstaffed, and when am I short?
  • Here are my recent Google reviews. What do customers praise, and what do they complain about?
  • Here is a month of my Facebook posts. Which product areas am I ignoring?
  • Then ask a follow-up. The first answer is rarely the best one. I find “Why do you think that is?” and “What would you change first?” usually get you to something you can act on.

AI gets things wrong, and it does so with complete confidence. Check any number before you act on it. Keep customer names, emails and loyalty details out of anything you upload.

It also won’t fix the floor. It might tell you the card wall underperforms on weekends, but someone still has to refresh that wall and help the customer standing in front of it. Independent stores win on their people, on the way staff greet customers and suggest products. Data can show you where to focus that effort. It can’t do the work.

I hear plenty of concerns about AI from retailers, mostly around copyright, energy use and jobs. They’re fair conversations to have.

Sitting it out is a business decision too, though, and it has a cost. The gift shop up the road isn’t sitting it out. Neither is the online seller in your collectables category, or the franchise group with an analyst at head office.

You don’t need a course or a consultant to get started. Set aside an hour this week, export one report and ask it three questions. Then write down one thing you’ll change.

Next week, try a different report.

A small shop can’t outspend the big players or undercut them on price. It can know its own business better than they do. An hour a week with your sales data is a cheap way to start.

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AI

Games and Puzzles Are Up 38%: The Toy Opportunity Newsagents Should Grab Now

Australian toy sales grew 10% in August 2026 and are up 12% for the year to date. Games and puzzles were the biggest dollar gainer this year, up 38%. Trading cards and jigsaws suit newsagency space, price points and shoppers. I think now is the time to give them more room.

The latest Australian toy sales data, collected for the Australian Toy Association, is good news for August 2026. Toy sales grew 10% for the month and are up 12% for the year to date. Globally, growth is stronger again at 16%.

I’ve been saying for a while that toys, games and puzzles deserve more space in newsagencies. These numbers back that up.

The biggest dollar gainers for the year to date were:

  • Games and puzzles, up 38%
  • Building sets, up 16%
  • Explorative and other toys, up 55%
  • Action figures and accessories, up 11%
  • Vehicles, up 8%

This list is ranked by dollars added, not percentage growth. That’s why explorative toys sit third despite growing 55%.

The top properties in August were Pokémon, Hot Wheels, Marvel Universe, Star Wars and Magic: The Gathering. Licensed toys now account for 47% of all toy dollars.

The fastest-growing properties compared with August 2025 tell an even clearer story: LEGO Pokémon, KPop Demon Hunters, Pokémon, Magic: The Gathering and The Hobbit.

Look at that the good news in the second list. Pokémon, Magic: The Gathering, The Hobbit. Strategic trading card games grew 24%, driven by Magic: The Gathering, The Hobbit and Riftbound. Cards are a big part of the games and puzzles story.

Many newsagents already sell Pokémon cards. Plenty sell jigsaws and puzzle books. We have the counter, the foot traffic and the customers.

What I think many of us lack is commitment. Cards get a small spot by the register. Jigsaws sit on a bottom shelf, spine out. That’s not good enough for a category growing at 38%.

The average toy price in August was $19.19, down slightly from $19.47 a year earlier. That’s a newsagency price point. It’s a gift, a reward or an impulse purchase, not a trip to a big-box toy store.

Christmas is about 12 weeks away. Here’s where I’d start.

  • Take space from magazines. Magazine sales are in structural decline. Every metre you free up can work harder for games, puzzles and cards.
  • Make a new category: puzzles, games, trading cardstrading cards a destination, you choose. Invest space and capital.
  • Back the licences. With 47% of toy dollars going to licensed product, stock the properties kids and adults are asking for.

Toys are growing, and games and puzzles are leading the way. For newsagents looking to replace declining categories, I think this is one of the clearest opportunities we’ve had in years.

The shops that commit space now will do well this Christmas. The ones that leave cards by the register and jigsaws on the bottom shelf will watch the sales go elsewhere.

Source: Data collected for the Australian Toy Association, August 2026.

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Newsagency management

Well done RBA and those who have cheered you on, you’ve just taxed small business lottery retailers.

It’s October 1, 2026. Surcharging to recover costs associated with how a customer chooses to pay is banned from today.

I am angry about what the ban on payment surcharges does to small business lottery retailers.

I am angrier still at the cheering. Commentators, lobbyists, media outlets and politicians of all sides have lined up to applaud the RBA for a move that hurts small business.

A real business cost is being dumped on retailers who work on a fixed, tiny margin, and we are expected to join in the applause.

From today, the major card networks’ no-surcharge rules take effect under the framework enabled by the RBA’s changes. Lottery retailers who have used surcharging to recover their payment costs lose that option. They keep the bill.

This move by the RBA is a tax on these local small retail businesses. The government does not collect it. A policy decision imposes it, and it comes straight out of the money they use to pay their bills and themselves.

A 1% fee can take 10% of the margin

Take a retailer who processes $100 in lottery sales by card and earns $10 in commission. A $1 payment processing fee takes 10% of that commission.

A commentator sees a 1% fee. The retailer sees a tenth of their income on those sales disappear, before wages, rent, electricity, insurance and everything else it takes to keep the doors open.

The real figures vary. Commission rates differ, payment fees differ, and so does the mix of cash and card. But this is how a fee that looks small from the outside can eat around a tenth of the gross margin on the lottery sales concerned.

If you think that is trivial, try taking the same cut to your own income. Then tell a small business owner to stop complaining.

“Put your prices up” is a useless answer

The ACCC says businesses can recover payment costs through their overall pricing. What use is that to a retailer who does not set the price?

Lottery ticket prices are fixed. Changing them requires approval from state regulators or governments, as The Lottery Corporation pointed out in its submission to the RBA. A retailer cannot adjust the price because the merchant bill has landed on them alone.

Charging more for something else in the shop? I do not accept that either. Why should the customer buying a greeting card pay for someone else’s lottery transaction?

Yes, the RBA’s package lowers the interchange fee caps. Good. A lower cost is still a cost, though, and whatever is left has to come from somewhere.

The cheer squad

It frustrates me how readily the small business owner’s income is treated as the easy answer. Let them absorb it. Let them work out how to make ends meet. Just do not let them spoil the good-news story.

The commentators, lobbyists, media outlets and politicians cheering this on have had their moment. They got the headline about savings at the counter. Not one of them has to find the money.

So own the consequence. You cannot celebrate the saving for the customer and ignore the retailer paying for it. If you backed this, you backed the cost that comes with it.

To the RBA and the ACCC: a lottery retailer on a fixed margin deserves a better answer than advice to recover costs through prices they are not allowed to set. These are real businesses. They are more than an awkward footnote to a tidy policy announcement.

You can all sleep well tonight. For the retailers facing the arithmetic above, the result is effectively a tax of around 10% of their gross margin on card-paid lottery sales. They can stay up working out how to cover it.

Well done, all. What a way to back small business.

A note to the politicians: when the next election rolls around and you say small business is the backbone of our economy, your laziness on this surcharge ban will show what you really think – that you don’t care about small business.

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Social responsibility

Card surcharging ends tomorrow

The EFTPOS pitches keep coming, so here is my warning, again.

Getting ready for the new rules and choosing a payment provider are separate decisions. Do not rush either.

What changes tomorrow

From 1 October 2026, surcharging is generally prohibited on eftpos, Mastercard and Visa debit, prepaid and credit cards, unless an exemption applies. American Express is also removing surcharging. Your card costs remain, so cover them in your pricing.

Interchange caps fall to 8 cents or 0.16% for debit and prepaid, and 0.3% for consumer credit. These cap interchange, not your total merchant fee. What matters is your actual bill.

Who makes money from the pitch?

The promoter may be paid if you sign. That could be a POS company, a group earning a referral fee or a comparison service. It does not make the plan bad. It does mean the interest should be disclosed.

Four questions before you sign

  • Who gets paid, and how much? Get it in writing.
  • What will it cost from 1 October? Use your actual transactions and include every fee.
  • How do interchange cuts reach me? For cost-plus, ask what is passed through and what margin is added.
  • What happens later? Ask about introductory rates, fee changes and exit costs.

Urgency is not an answer.

My position

I have no financial interest in this. My business Stride Retail Pty Ltd (newsXpress) does not make anything whatsoever from EFTPOS recommendations or transactions.

I want retailers paying the lowest practical total cost.

What to do today

  • If you surcharge: Switch it off on terminals, POS and online checkout. Update signs and brief staff.
  • Check your margin: Adjust prices where needed.
  • Get claims in writing: Then check your October statement against what was promised.

Who makes money from the recommendation? A good deal will stand up to that question.

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Newsagency management

What Happens to the Newsagent Who Does Not Decouple

If you have happened across this post out of context: I have been suggesting to newsagents for some time that they need to decouple their business from the newsagency channel given the decay of the channel and the disrespect with which it is help by news outlets and others. Staying as a newsagency its not an option in my opinion.

I have written about why to decouple and how to decouple. This post is about the path where you change nothing.

Not decoupling does not feel like a decision, and I think that is the trap. Nobody sits down and chooses decline. Every day you’;re busy doing what you know, only looking at the next step. The reorders go in and the lottery counter pays the bills. From the inside it feels like stability.

Let me show you what it actually looks like, from a real shop I reviewed recently. I will not name it.

Just under a million dollars through the till, in a wealthy village where the cafes are full every weekend. Sounds healthy. Underneath, 41 per cent of gross profit came from the lottery counter, at ten cents in the dollar. Add papers, magazines and agency lines, and more than half the shop’s profit was controlled by companies that do not know the owner’s name.

The gift department, in one of the best gifting towns in its state, sold nineteen dollars a week. Not a typo. The garden category, in a town full of acreage gardens, did twenty-seven dollars for the year. Nobody decided any of that. It happened one reorder at a time, over years, while the lottery counter quietly paid the bills.

Play it forward a few years and the exposure starts collecting. The Lottery Corporation that controls that counter told the sharemarket recently it is reviewing retailer commissions. Papers will stop at some point, and publishers will not consult you first. Australia Post reshapes its network on its own timetable. Every one of those decisions gets made in a boardroom you will never sit in, and the shop that has not decoupled absorbs each hit straight in the profit line, because nothing else in the building grew while there was time and money to grow it.

The traffic leaks away alongside the profit. The paper customer ages. The ticket buyer drifts online. The shop never built its own reasons for people to walk in, so when the inherited reasons fade, that is that.

Then comes the part I think about most: the exit. At some point every owner wants to sell. Nobody is queuing to buy a newsagency, and a shop earning most of its profit from declining agency lines is not a business a buyer can imagine owning. It is a job, attached to a lease. Many owners in this position do not sell. They close, and walk away from decades of work with a discounted value of the fixtures.

I want to be careful not to overdramatise, because the reality is quieter than that. There is no single bad year. Just a slow leak, and by the time it is obvious, the money and energy needed to transform have usually leaked out too.

The shop I described still has time. So does yours, probably. One afternoon with your sales data tells you which path you are on.

3 likes
newsagency of the future

Grand Final Eve: The Public Holiday Challenge for Small Business Retailers

Today is a public holiday in Victoria. Grand Final Eve. A day off so we can all get ready for the football.

I’ll leave the debate about whether it should exist to others but note that Victoria’s small businesses fund a holiday for an event that has not yet happened.

Okay, I can’t leave the debate. I think this public holiday is stupid, not warranted. It was brought in as an election stunt, and of course people voted for it. Ugh! Small business retailers carry the cost, especially those where most of what they sell is at prices not under their control.

If you run a shop in Victoria, today is about a simple piece of arithmetic. Public holiday penalty rates apply. That means the day has to earn its keep.

Plenty of shops find a strong morning and a dead afternoon, because by 2pm everyone is at a barbecue or the pub. If that is your pattern, trade the morning and close at lunch. There is no rule that says a public holiday is all or nothing, unless you’re in a shopping centre with such rules.

For some shops, though, this is a genuine trading day. If you are near a strip with cafes and pubs showing the build-up, there is foot traffic to serve. Cards and small gifts for hosts. Snacks and drinks if you range them. Balloons, team colours, anything celebration. The theme of the day is gathering, and gathering is a retail occasion. Lean into it in the window this week, not on the day.

Interstate readers, you have a different opportunity. Your Victorian suppliers and reps go quiet on Friday, but your customers do not. Saturday itself is a big one for last-minute party purchases everywhere the game is watched.

If you are closed today, like plenty will be, I hope you’ve adjusted hours on Google, posted about it on your socials and put a sign in your window. The quickest way to burn goodwill is a customer standing at a locked door wondering why.

Whatever you decide, decide it from your own numbers rather than habit. That is the whole game, on holidays and every other day.

Enjoy the football. Carn the underdogs.

3 likes
Newsagency management

Advice on How to Decouple Your Newsagency From the Channel: Five Jobs, Two Years

I have written plenty here about why I think newsagents need to decouple from the channel. The data points to less than ten years of life left in the traditional newsagency. The question I get asked most is how.

Decoupling is not a slogan and it is not a rebrand you order from a signwriter. It’s not restricted to any particular brand of newsagency either.

Decoupling is five jobs, done in order, over about two years. I watch newsXpress members do this work, so what follows is drawn from real shops.

Job one: find the number that is not yours. Go through your last full year and add up the gross profit from lines where somebody else sets the commission and can change the terms without asking you. Papers, magazines, lotteries, parcels, bill payments. That total, as a share of your whole GP, is your exposure. For a traditional newsagency it usually sits between half and three quarters, which shocks most owners the first time they see it. The goal is below a third. One afternoon with your POS data gets you the number.

Job two: make the floor tell the truth. Your floor is a budget. For each zone, note the share of space it takes and the gross profit it produces, divide one by the other, and sort. Most shops find a quarter of the floor producing five per cent of the profit. Quit the dead categories through a proper clearance, bank the cash, and give the space to what earns: cards, gifts, celebration. Put the papers at the back. I mean that literally. The paper customer will walk for them, and on the way they pass everything you actually make money on. Rerun the table quarterly. Move one bay each quarter.

Job three: replace the traffic before it leaves. This is the hard one, and I think it is where most transformations stall. I know of a shop with a terrific mix, gifts leading, print under ten per cent of GP, whose customer count still fell seven per cent last year. Changing what you sell does not by itself change why people come. Agency lines rented us traffic for a hundred years. Now you create it yourself. A loyalty program with real names and birthdays in it. A window that changes monthly, without fail. Small events. Local product, because the honey from ten minutes away brings in people Hallmark never will. Social media about what you unpacked this week. None of it is glamorous. All of it is weekly.

Job four: change the word. Only now do you change the sign. A rebrand on top of an unchanged shop is wallpaper. New trading name, new signage, and update your Google listing category from newsagency to gift shop, because that one field decides what searches you appear in. Check your lease first, since permitted use clauses can trip you up. Tell the story as growth: we have outgrown the old name. And do it while you are trading well. The worst time to rebrand is when you finally have to.

Job five: decouple the owner. A shop that runs out of your head is coupled to one more thing that will eventually leave. You. Document the routines. Give staff real departments with real numbers. Review the figures monthly like a board would. Nobody is queuing to buy a newsagency, but a profitable gift destination with owned traffic and clean numbers is a business a buyer can imagine owning. Decoupling and exit value are the same project.

Four numbers on the back room wall, checked monthly: customer transactions, the share of GP you control versus the share others control, GP per square metre, and the basket. If transactions and your owned share of GP are rising together, it is working.

You are done on the day no boardroom decision made without you can materially hurt your business. That is the whole test.

It starts with one afternoon and your own sales data.

Let me know if I can help: mark@newsxpress.com.au.

6 likes
Newsagency management

30 More Newsagents Are Decoupling From the Channel. Here Is What That Looks Like

Another 30 newsagents are actively working to decouple from the newsagency channel right now.

They are changing their business names, adjusting their product mix, deliberately relying less on legacy products for the future of their businesses.

This is not talk. It is work underway, in shops, right now.

For transparency: these are all newsXpress businesses, and plenty attended our recent conference in Perth, which focussed on decoupling. I am a Director of newsXpress, so read this post with that in mind.

The numbers are the numbers though, and I think they matter to anyone in this channel.

Thirty businesses moving at once is significant. In my experience, change in this channel usually happens one hesitant shop at a time. What we are seeing now is different. It is a group of retailers who have looked at the same evidence, reached the same conclusion, and started the same journey within weeks of each other.

The evidence is what I laid out in Perth. The data points to the traditional newsagency channel having less than ten years left. Papers, magazines and the other legacy lines that once defined these shops are in structural decline. That is not pessimism. It is arithmetic. And pretending otherwise helps nobody.

Decoupling is the response. Personally, I think it is essential.

It means separating the future of your business from the future of the channel. Becoming the best card and gift destination in your area, or the best of whatever you choose, rather than the local newsagency that also sells some gifts. And, what you choose can be anything, since you are not constrained by shingle expectations.

For the 30 businesses on this path, the work is practical. A new name that says what the shop is becoming, not what it was. Floor space rebalanced toward products that earn their keep. New traffic created through categories and marketing the shop controls, rather than traffic inherited from products in decline. It is roughly a two year job, done properly.

What encourages me most is the mindset. These retailers are not waiting for the channel to be saved. They are not waiting for a supplier, a distributor or a government to fix things. They are backing themselves.

I think we will look back on this period as the moment the smart end of the channel stopped identifying as newsagents and started building what comes next.

If you own a newsagency and this resonates, the first step costs nothing. Look at your sales data. Work out how much of your gross profit is controlled by others. Then decide whose future you want your business tied to. Theirs, or yours.

Footnote: The reality is that it is likely there are more than 30 newsagency businesses decoupling right now. The thirty I mention here are the ones I know about.

7 likes
newsagency of the future

Tony Robbins is coming to Australia: Save the four hundred to six thousand dollars. Back yourself instead.

Tony Robbins is coming to Australia Sydney next week for two days at the Fortuna One Summit. Tickets cost somewhere between four hundred and six thousand dollars. Then there are flights, accommodation, food and time costs to consider.

Don’t go. Back yourself instead.

Tony is a master presenter, no argument. He has spent decades honing his skills and knows exactly how to move an audience from ordinary Tuesday to standing on a chair by Wednesday afternoon. The volume, the pacing, the firewalk. All of it is choreographed to make you feel.

That is the point.

I think it is about making you feel you need more of him to become the version of yourself you glimpsed in the room. The two days you paid for are, structurally, an ad for the twelve months and the dollars that come next.

I say this as someone who has been to sessions like this in Australia and the US. I’ve paid thousands. But I stopped that in the late 1990s when I realised that I was enough, that my skills were what mattered and not how much I got caught up in an almost evangelical moment.

What the money could do instead

Four hundred dollars buys category signage and a proper look at your top thirty suppliers. Fifteen hundred is a weekend away with your partner talking about what you want the business to look like in three years. Three thousand gets a retail specialist walking your floor with you, plus new fixtures for the front of store. Six thousand covers a full store review, a floor replan, refreshed signage, a trial of a new range, and leaves change.

Any of those will change more in your shop than two days in an arena.

What actually changes a retail business

Transformation in a small shop is boring. It is not a firewalk. It is a fortnight cleaning up your category coding, a Sunday with the P&L and a highlighter, one honest conversation with a supplier. It is finally deleting the range that has not sold in two years.

None of that requires a guru. It requires you, a quiet room and a bit of nerve.

The room is not the answer

Twelve thousand people, most of them nodding, most of them buying at the back at the break. That environment is built to make hesitation feel like weakness. Any decision you would not make on a Tuesday morning at your desk, you should not make in a stadium on a Wednesday night.

Back yourself

You already know what needs to happen in your business. You have known it for months. What you have been waiting for is permission, or energy, or a push. A stadium gives you a jolt of all three. It fades by Monday. The invoice does not.

Keep the money. Take a day off, walk your shop like a customer, pull two years of numbers, and write down the three things you have been avoiding. Do one of them by Friday.

That is the seminar. It is free, and it is already booked.

9 likes
Newsagency management

We are not alone: The pharmacist and the servo: what other channels can teach newsagents

Newsagents sometimes talk as though we are the only channel being squeezed.

We are not.

Across Australia, plenty of legacy retail models have been through the same wringer: margins compressed, policy changed, customers drifted. Some of those channels have already worked out what to do about it. Here are a three examples:

The pharmacist

Community pharmacy copped it from two directions at once. The 60-day dispensing change cut dispensary margins, and Chemist Warehouse took the front of shop, the commodity toiletries, on price.

The independents that are thriving did not win that fight. They became clinical wellness hubs: vaccinations, prescribing, health screenings, boutique skincare. They swapped low-margin commodity turnover for high-margin expertise. The dispensary still matters, but it is no longer the business.

The servo

Petrol and convenience could see its own decline coming: EV adoption on the horizon, tobacco falling year after year. The response was not to defend fuel. It was to make fuel the second reason you pull in.

Walk into a good forecourt store now and it is a food and beverage business. Barista coffee, quick-service food partnerships, fresh meals. The bowsers bring some of the traffic; the kitchen makes the money.

Also, plenty of fuel outlets are now EV charging stations. Some even offer meting rooms for people to work, and meet, when charging.

The big discount store

Kmart was a struggling mid-tier department store carrying other people’s brands. It threw the model out and went with its own vertically integrated label, and became the value benchmark in the country. The specialty retailers that survived alongside it went the opposite way: out of mass-market plastics and into curated hobbies, board games and pop culture collectables.

Two opposite pivots, one shared insight: nobody survived by standing still in the middle.

What these examples have in common

In every case the squeeze was real and permanent. In every case the survivors stopped defending the legacy product and rebuilt around something customers could not get from a screen, a supermarket aisle or a big-box shed. Expertise. Food. Services. Curation.

And in every case, the businesses that waited for the legacy trade to recover are the ones we no longer talk about.

Commodity retail is a race to the bottom,.

Our channel is not uniquely cursed and it is not uniquely doomed. It is going through what others have already been through, and their playbook is sitting in plain sight: stop defending the declining product, reshape the floor around what a screen cannot replace.

What that looks like specifically for newsagents is what I will be talking about at the newsXpress conference in detail tomorrow.

3 likes
newsagency of the future

Here are ten things every newsagent should be doing in their business, and which too many are not

This is a brutal and practical list focussed on your profit.

  1. Manage product location by GP% return. Low margin product should not be taking up more expensive real estate. Papers and magazines to the back of the shop.
  2. Review your markup approach. Charge more for items people buy from you because you are convenient – these people are not buying based on price. Stationery: 125% at least.
  3. Stop letting supplier reps place orders without your explicit approval. Know what is being spent, and when.
  4. Empty your backroom of all stock. Customers don’t shop there. Stock has no place in any back room with logistics the way they are today. None of your competitors have a loaded back room.
  5. Clean out all the shit at, under and behind the counter. And, yes, I use shit because so much at the counter is there because of habit, and not because of profit.
  6. Load three different reports from your POS software into the AI of your choice and use this prompt: what do you see? I suspect it will see things you’re not seeing.
  7. Open the shop when you will make money and not because of some misplaced notion of customer service.
  8. Buy from suppliers who will not supply newsagents.
  9. Look at your bookkeeping and accounting processes and costs. An average newsagency should spend under $5,000 a year on this and I know many spending under $3,000.
  10. Take a sheet of paper and write down the last three times you had fun in the shop. Do one of those things again. have fun.

In too many newsagency businesses things are done because they have always been done, and that’s dragging the business down, hurting it, costing it money.

You need to disrupt the business. This list seeks to do that, or at least getting you thinking of what you could come up with to disrupt the business. In disruption is innovation.

You are the best person to blow parts of your business up.

Fixing a newsagency is not high brow stuff.

You certainly don’t need a consultant, or a coach.

You need desire, followed by action.

Time is short.

7 likes
Newsagency management

Customers love products that offer a warm hug

This display of products from Affirmations and also featuring some serviettes from Henderson are getting plenty of attention from shoppers. It’s what they see as they enter. Simple. neat. Encouraging optimism. Effective.

There is nothing ground breaking about this. The display is simple for sure. My point is this product has pitched at the right time.

People are buying for themselves and for friends.

A common comment is how much they love the range. One lady told her the other day that it makes her feel good. I like that.

Decisions we make in our shops are like editorial decisions. That’s how I see this display.

2 likes
retail

If you’re chasing cost cutting in your newsagency, you may be chasing the wrong thing

Most of the conversations I have had with newsagents lately started with the same question. How do I cut costs?

Fair enough. I ask it in my own shops too. Rent is not going down and neither are wages.

But I have noticed something. Some newsagents are spending all their energy on chasing cost savings and none of it on the business.

Someone will spend an afternoon chasing lower EFTPOS fees or getting insurance quotes and feel productive. The same person has not looked at dead stock in a year, or brought on a new product category.

That is the wrong thing, I think. You can make more money today and into the future by working on your business, in your business. I know the business books don’t agree.

I think the cost saving wins because it is easy. A phone call, a form, done. Working on the business is harder. You have to look at decisions you’ve made and be honest about them based on the evidence. That is uncomfortable, and so it waits.

What I see in the numbers

Here is what I see when I go through the numbers in a newsagency, mine included.

A saving of a couple of hundred dollars a month is hard to find and disappears in one bad quarter. Meanwhile, there is stock on the shelves that has not sold since March. A section running at 25 per cent margin sits where something at 55 per cent could be. Prices on some items are lower than they could be without hurting sales. And every day people walk in, buy what they came for, and walk out without an impulse purchase.

That is where the money is. Not in a cheaper phone plan or insurance.

Where to start

My advice if you want to free up cash and make more money is to start here.

  • Run a report of everything that has not sold in six months. Mark it down and get it out within two weeks. That is cash you’ve already spent, sitting there doing nothing.
  • Rank gross profit contribution by floorspace allocation. Most who do this are shocked.
  • Reset your counter to attract impulse purchases. Surprise people, so they notice.
  • Audit where the labour you pay for is spent. Typically, 20 per cent of that time can either be freed for more valuable work or cut from the roster.
  • Look at your prices for the products over which you have price control. A 1 per cent price increase is unlikely to affect unit sales. You get to bank the 1 per cent.

None of that is exciting. It is where I have seen the biggest financial benefit, bigger than you will get chasing a cost reduction on insurance.

An offer

If you would like a second pair of eyes, I will look at your business for free and come back with specific opportunities to improve its financial performance.

I need two things from you. A monthly sales comparison report for the year to 31 August 2026 against the same period a year earlier, and a rough sketch of your shop floor layout showing each of your departments. Send them direct to mark@towersystems.com.au and I will come back to you myself.

I am not selling anything here. I want to show, with your own numbers, that working on the business is likely to make you more money than chasing a reduction in an operating expense. What you do with what I find is up to you.

…

Disclosure: I founded Tower Systems (sold it in 2024 and still work for the business today) and I own newsXpress, and I own and run newsagencies.

7 likes
Newsagency management

Ten years. That’s what I think this channel has left.

I’m back from our national conference in Perth. Two and a half terrific days with newsagents, newsXpress members and suppliers to the channel.

Two subjects took up most of the room. Where this channel is heading, and what AI is already doing inside shops.

Where the channel is heading

I’ll put it plainly. I think the newsagency channel, as a channel, disappears inside ten years. It gives me no pleasure to write that.


Australia sits one decision away from the closure of a capital city daily newspaper. Several of them lose money. They’re being held up partly by emotion. News Corp has always loved ink on paper. Kerry Stokes has his attachment to The West Australian. Nobody wants to be the publisher who switches the first one off. That decision is coming anyway.

Print stopped delivering news a long time ago. By the time the paper lands on the counter the story is old. Your customers already know.

Magazines tell the same story in slower motion. Deliveries went from three days a week to two, and now to one. In some places it’s a coin toss whether they turn up at all. Titles we missed used to be couriered out. Not now.

Are Media is publicly up for sale. There’s plenty of talk about a break-up, including Are Direct and possibly XchangeIT. Worth watching closely, because whoever ends up owning the distribution business owns the physical route into our shops.

Stationery keeps drifting to Officeworks. Dollarama buying The Reject Shop means a harder shove from the value end of the market.

And when we make the news, it’s a closure story. Another one bites the dust.

The answer we spent most of our time on

Most of the conference went on what to do about it. We call it decoupling.

Disconnect from being a newsagency. Stop identifying as one. Present as something completely different, ideally something local and yours, rather than another national group’s brand painted over the top of the old shop.

This is more than a cosmetic change. Once you’re not a newsagency, you can sell to people who would never have walked into one, and that’s the whole point.

Three retailers who have already done it spoke to the room. Former newsagents, all of them. They talked about de-identifying, and about how their businesses run now.

AI, live on the big screen

Nobody gave a presentation about AI. We put it on the big screen and worked on real businesses, no script, in front of the room.

One retailer is doing well with clothing and wanted to build it out. In front of everyone we looked at the mistakes being made, then at how to tell a better price and sizing story for the demographic in that town.

Another had already decided to decouple and wanted to know what else to sell. That session produced a series of opportunities needing little capital, and then a four or five page business strategy report.

We spent time on the risks too, on where AI gets things wrong. It’s useful in small business retail, but only with a human checking the work.

What I said to the suppliers in the room

This channel will lose two to three hundred newsagents this year. So think hard about what you pitch.

The smart operators want product that brings more people through the door, and a broader demographic than they have today. Product that panders to the history of the channel has no future.

If you’re not helping retailers reach further than they reach now, you’re worth less to them than the supplier who will. We’re in this together, and the ones who understand that will do well out of the next few years.

I have been called pessimistic before

A newspaper publisher once stood in front of a room and told everyone I was wrong about declining newspaper sales. Magazine publishers objected to me discussing magazine decline at all. Those calls have aged fine.

There’s no doubt in my mind that the traditional Australian newsagency has no future. A business built on lotteries, papers, magazines, stationery and greeting cards, and not much else, is already dead. The owner just doesn’t know it yet.

Now look at a shop leaning into sensory product, Pokémon and other collectibles, and good quality gifts. People walk in for completely different reasons. That business has somewhere to go.

Where we are

newsXpress has 194 members. We’ve never chased being the biggest, and we’re not your average newsagency marketing group. What we have is a group of retailers who want to move, and are moving.

Our focus is a strong back half of 2026, then 2027 and 2028.

Mark Fletcher
mark@newsxpress.com.au
0418 321 338

8 likes
newsagency of the future

A card company paying cash for card space says a lot about their business

Greeting card suppliers are back at retailer doors offering cash for wall space.

Before you sign, understand exactly what you are agreeing to.

I don’t get it, I really don’t.

What does it say about the card company that they have to give a retailer cash to buy their business. I would have thought that the retailer and the card company would make more money if the cards were the best and backed by the best service. A bag of cash takes consideration away from product. maybe that’s what they want.

The offers I am hearing of are big. Fifty thousand dollars. One hundred thousand. Sometimes three hundred thousand. The old structure was an interest free loan, repaid through rebates on card sales. More recent deals leave the rebate untouched and require the retailer to repay the cash on top.

Either way, the deal is the same. The supplier is not investing in your business. They are renting your wall. And you are the one carrying the debt.

It doesn’t make sense to me.

When choosing a card supplier you need to choose based on revenue for the business from cards, and what else happy card shoppers will buy in your business.

A card company should earn its space through sell-through. Once money enters the deal, performance stops being the measure. You stop asking which cards sell and start planning what the cash will pay for. That is exactly what the supplier wants.

The evidence is clear. We have seen a business where one supplier held the entire card wall. Splitting the wall fifty fifty delivered immediate double digit growth. A later supplier change lifted sales again. Competition and range drove those results. No cheque did.

One newsagent with multiple stores took around three hundred and fifty thousand dollars from a card company and later collapsed, leaving the supplier out of pocket. I wonder if retailers ended up paying for this?

Plenty of retailers are unhappy with their card company and cannot leave. The debt locks them in.

The cash is not free. You pay for it in weaker card sales and lost freedom to change suppliers. If a card company wants your wall, make them earn it with product that sells.

If a card company offers you cash up front for a commitment, pause. Sure, the cash would come in handy. The question has to be – over the lifetime of the contract, what is the real cost of the cash I might get today? Also ask: how bad are their products that they need to buy my business?

3 likes
Greeting Cards

What The Lottery Corporation’s FY26 results mean for newsagents

The Lottery Corporation released its FY26 results and annual report this week. There is plenty in them for anyone with lotteries in their shop, including one number that will get less attention than it deserves: the migration of lottery sales online has stalled, for now.

The year in numbers

Lotteries turnover was $6,547 million, down 3.1%. TLC puts the fall down to a ‘bad’ run of jackpots, which it calls a 1 in roughly 45 year outcome, costing around $700 million in turnover. There was no $100 million-plus Powerball for the first time since FY21 and no $50 million-plus Oz Lotto for the first time since FY17.

That context matters. Soft lottery commission in FY26 was bad luck with jackpot sequences, not a collapse in play. Base games grew 5.6%. Saturday Lotto was up 9.4%. Instant Scratch-Its rose close to 8%, and scratchies are a retail product.

Digital migration has stalled, for now

Digital turnover fell 2.3% to $2,760 million. Retail turnover fell 3.8% to $3,787 million. Digital’s share of lottery turnover crept from 45.7% to 46.6%, and the share gains are shrinking each year: 2.3 points in FY24, 1.4 in FY25, 0.9 in FY26.

Digital sales have now gone backwards in dollars for two years running, from a jackpot-fuelled peak of $3,005 million in FY24. Retail still writes the majority of lottery turnover.

Before anyone celebrates, I have two cautions to share. Jackpot games skew digital, so a weak jackpot year flatters retail’s position. Some of this pause is mix, not migration reversing. And TLC’s strategy leaves no doubt about direction.

TLC describes itself as moving from a lottery operator to a digitally-led entertainment platform, calls digital its primary growth engine, is building a new app for 1H28 and wants to convert more than 4 million unregistered players into known, registered customers.

The shift online has slowed, not stopped.

What retailers should watch

A commission review is coming. In the FY27 priorities published by TLC is: “review retailer commission structure”. No detail is given. Individually and through our representative bodies, we need to engage early and argue for a structure that rewards service and performance rather than one that shrinks the pool

The network language has changed too. TLC now talks about its retail footprint as quality over quantity. Expect continued pressure on marginal outlets and higher expectations of those that stay. At 30 June 2026 there were 3,880 lottery outlets and 3,263 Keno venues, more than 7,100 points of distribution in all.

The channel is still valuable. TLC paid $637 million in commissions to retail and venue partners in FY26, and its CEO acknowledged those partners are primarily small businesses.

Price rises keep coming. Powerball went from $1.20 to $1.40 a game in November 2025 and held 63% of the increase. Set for Life goes from 60 cents to 70 cents in September 2026, with an Oz Lotto change slated for 1HFY28.

On integration, new terminals have been rolled out in NSW, the ACT and Queensland, with Victoria to follow. QR codes on unregistered tickets, digital prize claiming and Check & Collect blur the line between channels. Where TLC connects digital play back to a retailer, support it. Where it does not, ask why.

What I would do in-store

Nothing in these results changes my long-held advice. Don’t run a business reliant on lottery commission to survive. Lottery products bring traffic on thin margin, and around 30% of turnover from lottery commission is the most a well-balanced newsagency should rely on. Even though it is hard hard work, use the traffic to build baskets in cards, gifts and good margin categories. And watch that commission review like a hawk.

The point

TLC had a soft year because jackpots ran cold, not because Australians stopped playing. Digital sales fell and the migration online has stalled for now, while the company’s plans remain firmly digital. Retailers have been handed time and a warning in the same set of results. What we do with both is up to us.

General commentary, not financial advice.

3 likes
Lotteries
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