Message from the WLA President

Reflecting on the past year as WLA President, I’m reminded of what an honor it is to be part of such an extraordinary global community of dynamic professionals, who share WLA values and a commitment to supporting so many good causes around the world.

It has been a year of great progress. The elaboration of the new WLA five-year strategy, will reinforce our efforts to ensure the integrity of the lotteries, sports, and sports betting community, and allow us to better serve our evolving global membership.

Approved by the WLA Executive Committee in October, this process has enabled us to revisit our positioning, vision and mission, to further strengthen our brand, and develop a value proposition suitable for our ever-evolving industry and membership.  

An important aspect of our role as a global association is to provide members with pertinent information on industry trends and best practices. We greatly value the support of the regional lottery associations, with whom our events attracted over 1500 participants during the past year. Experts discussed technology and marketing strategies, responsible gaming, security, the benefits of certification to the WLA RG Framework and WLA Security Control Standard, addressing illegal betting markets, as well as the power of sports analytics and artificial intelligence, sports books and statistical betting.  

Preparations also continued for the 2024 World Lottery Summit to be held in Paris, France, together with lottery host, groupe Française des Jeux (FDJ). A promotional booth was also created for the CIBELAE Congress held in Lisbon, Portugal.

As lotteries continue to develop sports betting, WLA has boosted its work to combat the growing incidents of illegal betting and match fixing, which negatively impact our reputation and industry as a whole.  

We continued to expand our partnerships with sports and other organizations involved in this global fight. Our Executive Director, Luca Esposito, became a member of the Asian Racing Federation Council on Anti-Illegal Betting and Related Financial Crime (ARF), which exchanges intelligence on the illegal betting markets with WLA and raises awareness of these issues at global events.

"It has been a year of great progress. The elaboration of the new WLA five-year strategy, will reinforce our efforts to ensure the integrity of the lotteries, sports, and sports betting community, and allow us to better serve our evolving global membership."

It was a significant year for the United Lotteries for Integrity in Sport (ULIS), with whom we, and other organizations, work closely to combat match fixing and corruption in sports. We commend ULIS for the roll-out of its rebranding and new key services, which cover awareness raising through education, training and joint projects. In June, WLA supported the first ULIS Integrity Seminar in Lausanne. The event was organized together with the IOC, with speakers from IOC, ITIA, FIFA, UEFA, Council of Europe and INTERPOL.

Our committees take initiatives and work with different partners to address industry challenges and issues that affect our members. The WLA Betting Integrity on Sports & Horse Racing Committee (BISHRC) collaborated with Council of Europe (CoE) and its project for Addressing Competition Manipulation Together (ACT), to raise awareness of sports competition manipulation and related illicit activities. As a result, our work to define responsible and reasonable bets was adopted by the CoE Macolin Convention Working Group.

The WLA Illegal Lotteries Betting Commission (ILBC) also ramped up its activities and began a project with the University of Lausanne to develop a position paper on how to estimate the size of illegal betting markets worldwide. The paper will be presented at a seminar in the first quarter of 2024.

Certification to our standards enables members to uphold the highest levels of operations security in physical retail outlets and online. The WLA Security Risk Management Committee (SRMC) finalized the next iteration of the WLA Security Control Standard (WLA SCS: 2024), to be published in October 2024. In addition to the basic general criteria and updates of the ISO/IEC 27001 standard, the Committee reviewed the controls for cloud security, which affect the lotteries and their global supply chains. A survey was also carried out by the SRMC to understand risk perception and priorities of members. Key insights from the results will assist us in broadening our activities and enhancing support to members.  

Equally, it was a productive year for the Corporate Social Responsibility Committee (CSRC), which undertook a number of initiatives to raise the level of responsible gaming and ensure that all WLA lottery members achieve Level 2 certification to the WLA RG Framework. Ten lotteries began the process, and there was a record 17 certification submissions.

Finally, I would like to thank all our Members, Contributors, and staff. Their unwavering dedication and support enable us to help the global lottery and sports betting community achieve its goal of raising funds for good causes worldwide. I look forward to our continued collaboration in 2024.