The deal hands Betex with exclusive rights to market and promote the service in three Chinese provinces, home to an estimated 16m mobile users.
The company is hoping to gain a significant slice of the region’s £80m-a-year ticket sales.
The service, due to launch by the end of 2006, will be subscription-based. Betex will earn approximately 7% commission on the ticket sales in addition to the subscription fee.
Around 15% of takings will be paid to the mobile service provider for admin and revenue collection. Betex said that the provider has an established management team with combined lottery experience of more than 35 years.
Betex is hoping to take advantage the rapidly growing Chinese lottery market and the increasing numbers of mobile phone users in the world’s most populous country.
Eight in ten of China’s 431m mobile users are already using SMS or WAP services – necessary in order to use the Betex lottery application.
Peter Greenhill, CEO of Betex, welcomed the deal.
“We are very excited to have the opportunity to enter the market for the remote selling of lottery tickets via mobile telephone at such an early stage in the market’s development.
“Physical access to lottery terminals is a restricting factor in the growth of the lottery in China, where penetration levels are a fraction of those in mature markets, but mobile technology creates the opportunity for sales to occur at any time and from any location.”
© Crimson Business Ltd 2006
