Inside the complexities of Europe’s lottery digital shift

Europe’s lottery operators are taking more of their business online. But turning a sector rooted in retail sales, cash payments and physical outlets into a digital product is proving far more complicated than simply putting Lotto on a phone.

European Lotteries members reported €109.9bn in sales and €46.1bn in gross gaming revenue in 2024. Online GGR reached €6.2bn, up 19 per cent year on year. Yet the same operators still rely on almost 300,000 physical points of sale across Europe.

Nikolina Gabelica, Managing Director, Lottery at EveryMatrix, said the apparent simplicity of the transition can be misleading.

“It might seem as simple as taking a retail product and putting it online, but it isn’t,” she told SiGMA News.

The problem is particularly acute in markets where national lotteries compete for attention with commercial gambling companies offering broader portfolios, more modern interfaces and personalised promotions.

“It’s not easy for lotteries to compete with private gambling operators,” Gabelica said. “But I don’t think they should try to compete in exactly the same way, because they are fundamentally different businesses.”

For traditional lottery operators, going digital can therefore mean rebuilding much more than the sales channel. The online product has to incorporate subscriptions, customer services, instant games, content, mobile functionality and, increasingly, loyalty and personalisation. Gabelica argued that many lotteries still lag in those areas, despite having large potential online audiences. In a recent EveryMatrix communication, she put a figure on the gap: “Only 22 per cent of European lottery members currently have online loyalty programmes, meaning 78 per cent of lotteries do not have one, which is incredible.”

Retail habits are hard to break

Digital adoption also varies sharply from country to country.

Belgium’s National Lottery reported about €413m in digital stakes in 2024, compared with roughly €1.125bn through physical retail. Its network still comprised 6,727 sales points, while more than two million customers had registered player accounts.

For Gabelica, those differences reflect behaviour as much as technology.

“Consumer habits also matter,” she said. “In some Eastern European countries, people are still more accustomed to paying in cash. They go to a shop and buy things with cash, and that behaviour carries over into lottery play.”

Retail can also offer something digital gambling cannot: anonymity.

“If customers are not required to fully register when buying in retail, they can remain anonymous,” she said. “They can pay in cash, and there is no record linking them to the transaction.”

By contrast, she said consumers in Nordic markets are generally more accustomed to digital payments. “In the Nordics, people spend much more digitally rather than in cash.”

Brand trust does not necessarily translate into online play. A well-known national lottery may have little problem persuading customers that its website is legitimate, but that does not always make those customers want to play online. “Trust may get customers to the website,” Gabelica said. “But that does not necessarily mean they will make a purchase.”

One continent, different rules

Under Finland’s incoming gambling system, Veikkaus’ monopoly activities and its competitive-market activities are to be separated. Gabelica described the operational effect as requiring “separate accounts, separate websites, separate everything”. In some countries, she added, restrictions can even prevent operators from cross-selling products to the same players.

Large-scale system changes can also be slow. Gabelica said writing the requirements for a supplier tender is difficult, particularly when several systems are being changed at once. The process can take “sometimes even a year” before the operator even invites suppliers to bid for the project, followed by further time for suppliers to respond and for operators to evaluate the bids.

The UK shows how extensive the transition can become even in a highly digital market. Allwyn said digital sales accounted for 51 per cent of UK National Lottery sales in 2025, reaching GBP 4.1bn (€4.8bn). But its wider modernisation programme also involved replacing more than 41,000 retail terminals.

Moving online changes the risks

The shift also changes the nature of a lottery product, Gabelica explained. A traditional draw game may involve one or two purchasing decisions a week. Digital instant-win products can be available around the clock.

That puts responsible-gambling tools, certification and compliance inside the technology itself. Suppliers must meet market-specific requirements and certification standards, while operators need digital systems capable of protecting players as well as selling to them.

For lottery operators, the digital challenge is therefore not simply attracting younger customers or designing a better app. It means modernising ageing systems, navigating different national rules, competing with digital-first gambling companies, preserving a huge retail network and building safeguards into products that can now be played at any time.

The original version of this article was published by SiGMA.