Ahead of the January 1, 2012 commencement date for the Central Bank of Nigerias cashless economy policy test-run in Lagos State, it is significant to understand the implications for the gaming sector in terms of the options, benefits and opportunities that will emerge. All over the world, gaming is a big business. Millions of dollars are transacted daily in various casinos and betting shops around the globe on different types of organised betting such as lottery, horse-racing, football and machine games. Lottery alone accounted for over US$128bn of the world gaming market in 2000. Though there are no comprehensive sales figures for global gaming, it is however reasonable to assume from available data that annual global gaming turnover would be in trillions of dollars.In Nigeria today, two types of games are prevalent among the gaming masses. These are football pools and lotto. While lotto is relatively new in Nigeria, the football pools game was introduced to the country in the colonial era. In the football pools sector, some of the operators, especially the big and viable ones, have been around for the last 30 years or more and, despite the constraints, are doing well and very likely to continue. For lotto, the prevalent 5/90 format was launched in Ghana in 1962 and brought to Nigeria in the 1980s. The lotto game that started then with one weekly draw now has six editionsdrawn one game daily from Monday to Saturday. Lotto is spreading very fast across the southern states and is likely to cover the entire nation in the next few years, just like football pools betting.Football pools and lotto are well known and patronised by over 60 per cent of our adult population especially in the Lagos area. Research has shown that gross gaming turnover for both games in Lagos alone is in excess of N4bn every month, that is, over N48bn yearly. It is projected that annual national gaming turnover would be over N200bn when transactions from other states of the federation, where lawful betting is permitted, are included. Out of this volume, less than 20 per cent is transacted through the banks and over 80 per cent of the players are unbanked. Apart from this downside, I feel the gaming business as conducted now in the country is bedevilled by other challenges that could be addressed by the national cashless economy policy. At present, most gaming tasks are done manually. As a result, the operation is usually slow, and prone to unintended errors and deliberate fraud. Manual operations generally inhibit large-scale transactions, limit business growth and hinder expansion as much time and effort are wasted on manual computation of sales and validation of entries. There is also the problem of sales diversion/conversion, unauthorised expenses/deductions and general cash mismanagement by agents, reducing operators profit margins and making sales projection and planning difficult for them.Though the introduction of compulsory online operation for lotto operators by the Lagos State Government has ameliorated the problems to some extent, there is still a lot to be done to get close to international standards. And, this creates, at this time, the urgent need and the opportunity for the introduction of robust, secure and easily adaptable integrated Point of Sales terminals to process online betting and the associated financial transactions simultaneously. This will pave the way for fast, efficient and accurate operations, and eliminate fraud and other problems of manual operation. It will serve as a direct solution to the age-long problem of clumsy, sluggish and fraud-prone operation which the operators have been saddled with. It will be a welcome relief for them and an opportunity to introduce more games taking advantage of speed and efficiency provided by online operation. The integration of cashless transactions will also eradicate or reduce considerably sales diversion/conversion, unauthorised expenses/deductions and general cash mismanagement by sales agents. This is a very serious problem encountered by operators in the football pools and lotto industry across the nation.For the gaming agents who live on commissions, there will be more business as they can now render additional services such as air-time vending with their POS terminals alongside the introduction of new exciting games that the online advantage will afford the gaming operators. There will be more options for the gaming public in terms of games and additional services now available to them and rendered by their agents. Gaming bookmakers, compilers and publishers, such as the RSK Group, King & George, Willy Tips and others, will also benefit immensely from the bigger and better-organised gaming sector that will emerge. It will be a welcome development for our local banks, given the volume of financial transactions that will follow. It is a rare opportunity for the banks to channel the huge funds in the present informal gaming sector to the formal banking economy. Our local banks must engage in vigorous awareness campaigns and make deliberate moves to gain and retain new accounts from stakeholders in this sector, employing different result-oriented marketing strategies and offering various hard-to-resist incentives. This in effect will afford the new customers access to bank facilities and the numerous benefits of modern banking, previously unavailable to them. The adoption of online cashless transactions will forge greater co-operation and better understanding among the gaming operators themselves, their agents and the regulators which, at present, is lacking. It will be embraced by the Lottery Board and the Regulatory Government Ministry for Pools Betting as it will help to resolve the problem of standards and control these bodies have always battled with, and to provide reliable database for collecting gaming taxes and levies thereby curtailing possible revenue leakages from this sector.The cashless economy policy, if well understood and properly implemented, will be a big win for the gaming industry as it will enforce uniform gaming standards, foster greater co-operation among stakeholders, broaden revenue generation by all parties and sanitise generally the gaming business in Lagos State and other parts of the country.- Eko wrote in from Wazobia Promotions Ltd, 580/582, Ikorodu Road, Lagos. He can be reached on wpltd@yahoo.com or 0805 147 6643
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