Who is buying Aussie online lottery’s shares?

A report in the Australian Financial Review flagging the purchase of a 5.1 percent chunk of online lottery Jumbo Interactive’s shares Wednesday has set tongues wagging in the sector, with the AFR speculating that the buyer could be recent Aussie market entrant from Europe, lottery re-seller Lottoland.

The AFR said the purchase occurred after the market closed, was at a high premium to the share price, and that the size of the buy (around 2.25 million shares) will trigger stock exchange regulations which will identify the buyer.

Jumbo Interactive’s shares rocketed 15 percent higher on Thursday, reaching a three-year high of A$2.30.

Jumbo’s attraction may be the operating contract it holds for OzLotteries under provincially-oriented licences from the Tatts Group, but two of those have expired, and two more complete in just a few months’ time, leaving Tatts with the option to cancel some or all of its arrangement with Jumbo at a month’s notice.

Our readers will recall that Jumbo took an expensive commercial bruising in the German market and shut down its operations there late last year.

If the at present unknown buyer of Jumbo equity is Lottoland, it perpetuates an ambitious start for the aggressive European company, which launched its Aussie operations in January last year and has been making waves in the local lottery sector.

It follows industry rumours (so far not officially confirmed) that Lottoland is about to take on a major Australian horse racing sponsorship.

Back in Europe, Lottoland has just acquired an Irish operating licence, and has been waging a war of words with UK National Lottery operator Camelot (see previous reports).

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