Sugal & Damani joins race to run the UK National Lottery

Sugal & Damani Group, a four-decade-old diversified conglomerate that is the largest lottery operator of India, announced that it has entered the UK Gambling Commission (UKGC)’s competition to select the operator of the fourth license to run the UK National Lottery by completing its response to the Gambling Commission’s Selection Questionnaire.

Sugal & Damani had also participated in the 2007 tender process, where it was declared as a reserved bidder for running the UK lottery, which is the sixth-largest in the world by sales, and is currently operated by Camelot.

Kamlesh Vijay, Group CEO of Sugal & Damani said: “As a leader in operating lotteries across India and other jurisdictions, Sugal & Damani has shown its deep interest to operate the UK National Lottery since 2007 when it participated and also got selected as a reserve bidder by qualifying all Required Standards like propriety, technology, player protection, channel management, financial capability, etc."

The technology arm of Sugal & Damani, Skilrock Technologies is a leading solution provider for lottery, gaming and commercial services operations across 26 jurisdictions of the world, including some of the prominent World Lottery Association (WLA) member lotteries with a combined installation base of over 200,000 POS (point-of-sale) and 7 million iGaming players enabled by its platform and content consisting of more than 70 games.

“We are looking for a fair and open competition that UKGC has initiated, we are very much in the game, we are in the final stages of creating a strong consortium of credible partners, the details of which will be shared in due course,” Vijay continued.

“As far as the UK lottery market is concerned, it is a large one and highly reputed. There are a huge local following and brand reputation for the UK National lottery, but there are challenges in the market too because people are looking for new excitement and there is stiff competition from other gambling products. We believe that people have a soft corner due to the fact that lotteries contribute more towards well defined good causes, so that attitude is a big plus point. However, continued innovation is very much required in a responsible way to consolidate on this soft corner. Being an organization with deep-rooted innovation in every sphere of our activity we are happy to be in the competition,” Vijay concluded.