A year of new beginnings

The year has begun with renewed vigor, excitement and great anticipation of the next World Lottery Summit (WLS) to be held in Paris, France, in October. We are already hard at work, with the host lottery, groupe Française des Jeux, preparing to deliver an unforgettable week in the French capital.

This landmark industry event will take place at the Paris Convention Center (Palais des Congrès), with the theme of Impacting society together, and will explore the three key areas: impact of know-how of the lottery and sports betting operators​; society at the heart of values of the lottery and sports betting operators, and together we are stronger.

We have an excellent line-up of diverse keynote speakers from different industries, who will share new perspectives on important trends and topics that affect our sector, such as technology and innovation.

There is also plenty to look forward to from our industry. Our suppliers will provide latest updates, while the parallel sessions will give experts from the lotteries and sports betting operators the opportunity to discuss: innovation and creativity, sport, diversity and inclusion, security, responsible gaming, the fight against illegal gaming, technology and more.

In a year of innovation at WLA, another key project is underway, as we begin to roll-out our new strategy. We have revitalized our purpose, vision, and mission, and begun to formulate and execute the actions required to achieve our objectives, some of which include: promoting and raising awareness of sports integrity among our members who offer sports betting; evolving our Responsible Gaming and security standards, and building subject matter networks across regions. We expect to showcase key aspects of the new strategy during WLS 2024.

This year in October, the next iteration of the WLA Security Control Standard, (WLA: SCS 2024), developed by the WLA Security Risk Management Committee (SRMC). It is the only internationally recognized standard for the legal lotteries and sports betting operators, and their suppliers, which aims to assist our members to achieve a level of security control that is aligned with generally accepted best practices. In addition to general updates, and continuing to follow the international ISO/IEC 27001, Information security management systems (ISMS)- Requirements, standard, which was updated in 2022, the new iteration has made some important revisions to the cloud security controls.

Over the past two years, we have continued to advance our project to digitalize WLA communications materials, in a new format that is easy to access, search and share, across multiple devices. We are pleased to announce that we have launched our new publications platform, where henceforth, all new publications, including magazines, brochures and best practice guides will be available in one space. We expect to add the blog, reports and other key materials over the coming year, and encourage everyone to visit at: https://publications.world-lotteries.org/.

We hope you enjoy this issue.