Irish Lottery Reported Up For Sale

First it was Camelot in the UK and now it seems Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan (OTPP) is about to give up its Irish lottery stake too.

The Canadian fund is believed to have hired the Swiss Bank UBS to look into selling their company Premier Lotteries Ireland (PLI).

The Irish gaming franchise was granted a 20-year license around a decade ago to operate the National Lottery. This was at a cost of €405 million. The fact there is still another decade to go made the company’s intention to sell both puzzling and surprising.

Nor are OTPP believed to have money troubles: they made a four per cent net return last year. And, over the past decade, the Irish Lottery has netted them an average 8.5 per cent return. In 2021 sales of Lottery tickets passed the €1bn mark. That resulted in a net profit for PLI of €25.3 million that year – around €10 million more than in 2020.

However, it’s not all been plain sailing. Only last year an audit of the Irish National Lottery by the country’s Comptroller and Auditor General highlighted the spending of unclaimed winnings by PLI. They pointed out that the €124 million (US$131.71 million) in unclaimed prize money should have been spend on projects to benefit the community. Instead, the company had used it to pay for marketing and promoting the Lottery itself.

This prompted calls by the government for more supervision of PLI’s actions. But there is no reason to suppose that this was the cause of the company’s intended departure.

When asked if the company was up for sale, a PLI spokeswoman was unwilling to comment on speculation.

She added: “Any discussion regarding the ownership structure is a question for the shareholders and not something that we are in a position to comment on.”

OTPP, who formerly owned Camelot (the company which ran the UK Lottery), were taken aback recently after their rights to run it were removed and awarded to Allwyn instead.They went on to sell the lottery franchise to their rivals. The sale included the right to run the Lottery for the state of Illinois.

OTPP hasn’t provided a reason for its sudden decision to sell up in Ireland. The move comes a month after the organization completed its sale of Camelot’s assets, including those in Illinois, to Allwyn. For those assets, it is believed to have earned around £100 million (US$120.86 million) for shareholders.