needed and most beneficial. In terms of investment and monitoring, we've invested in globally recognized, best-of-breed cyber defensive and monitoring tools and partners. Our twenty-four by seven teams ensure there's continuous monitoring and rapid response to cyber threats. In line with our cyber strategy, we continue delivery of our cyber uplift program, which is already realizing tangible benefits. Our cyber program is focused on strengthening cyber foundations in preparation for that continued system transformation. That includes uplifting governance practices, policy, asset management, visibility, and any remedial activities that are triggered by those vulnerability management programs. Change management is an important element, and we emphasize that workforce education to manage the human risks, and that extends beyond the standard phishing simulations. It's augmented by additional tabletop simulations for technology teams and our executives to improve muscle memory and operational resilience.
As we continue to expand the program, we're introducing new ways to secure access to systems, to reduce unnecessary data, and then to implement data encryption technologies, and further tightening our internal controls to ensure that our systems are resilient and recoverable, and ultimately, to ensure that TLC is ready and prepared to respond to any ongoing threats. So to sum up, we are proud to have robust and proven technology platforms that handle extraordinary traffic. Our bespoke technology is complex yet scalable. It caters to very specialized requirements, and it's underpinned by the expertise of high-performing, highly skilled teams. We have a track record and a continuing ambition to deliver unique digital and retail experiences that meet our customer needs and drive growth.
Our targeted technology initiatives are going to grow and enhance business operations by delivering seamless omni-channel experiences that grow our customer base, and also by embedding that customer data platform to achieve personalization at scale. We're going to be growing the use of AI to enhance our business, and we're going to be delivering foundational infrastructure, optimization, and cybersecurity programs. So thank you very much, and with that, I am going to call on Antony Moore, our Chief Channel Officer.
Thanks, Lauren, and good morning, everyone. I have the enormous privilege of leading our retail bricks and mortar network across 7,200 small businesses that make up our Lotteries and Keno network. I've been with many of Australia's leading retail brands over my years, deep retail experience, and I've been with the Lotteries business for over 13 years. Retail is a key foundation of our business, and it's built on strong relationships with our partners. Many of these relationships span many decades. We've one of the largest retail networks in the country, and this enhances our strong brand awareness and the community acceptance of our product.
Our retail model is a low-cost model, and it enables us to scale efficiently and effectively, but it also provides us the flexibility to adapt to changing market dynamics as the market of retail itself changes. Our big focus and opportunity is to leverage our scale to improve, deliver and improve customer experience through our digitized services. Small businesses in the communities in which they operate, maintaining strong partnerships with industry are very, very important to us. As we said, we operate one of the largest retail operations in Australia. For our Lotteries business, around 4,000 retail outlets. By way of comparison, Woolworths across Australia and New Zealand operates about 1,700 stores, Coles about 1,100, Australia Post about 4,300, and 80% of those are their licensed post office network or about 80% of their network.
The estimated retail value, or sorry, media value of our retail footprint is over AUD 30 million annually. So you can see that the retail network is vitally important in making sure it retains the presence of our business. Our network operates across metropolitan, regional, and remote areas across the licensed states and territories in which we operate, and this is vital to the long-term sustainability of many of our retail partners. It's a mutually beneficial arrangement designed to encourage our franchisees to provide a positive and familiar customer experience, and most importantly, to drive growth across both the physical and digital channels. Our retail distribution strategy focuses on prominent branding coupled with widespread availability.
In Australia, we operate what we call a select distribution model, and this is characterized by easily accessible network with strong brand identity, and we operate within a store, within a store network, and this balances the accessibility to the product. This delivers a high return for our retailers as a result of a high level of commitment and investment from them. What that does is it enables a continued high level of demand for people who want to join our network, our franchise network. We're really selective of who we select in terms of our franchisees and the nature of the business that we join up.
We also want to make sure that we have the ongoing sustainability of our retail partners, and the quality and consistency of our offer is really, really important to us, and therefore, we get a better quality of experience across our customers. We operate a franchise business model, and therefore, our operating costs on a per-outlet basis are quite low, as we don't have to fund everything. Having said that, making sure that we achieve an appropriate ROI for both franchisees and for TLC is vitally important to us. We have a very rigorous assessment process for applicants and locations, and this helps make sure that we can continue to diversify both the channel type and the locations in which we operate.
Underpinning this is a sophisticated modeling tool that we use, and this helps us to make sure that we have a positive return on investment for our outlets before we enter into a franchise agreement. Our low-cost model makes sure that we can have ongoing sustainability for both TLC and our franchisees. We continue that strong and successful formula across our network in terms of business management, training, and compliance. The Australian Franchise Rating Scale provides an independent and objective tool to help franchisees and their advisor measure different franchise systems. TLC has held the highest five-star rating in this program since its inception in 2019, and we're proud to show off all of our trophies out in the trade area. We've also recently reviewed and optimized our retail operations team, and we've done this to better operate, support our diverse network that we operate.
This has led to the provision of a more effective, efficient, and productive way of supporting our franchisees in the more diverse network we operate. It's also consistent with our focus on achieving an appropriate ROI, while making sure that our cost to serve is economical as it possibly can be. All of this is strongly underpinned by strong relationships with all of our partners. Stakeholder management is vitally and strategically important to us, both for the retail network and for our retail partners. TLC has a number of industry partnership agreements in place to support that. We maintain very strong relationships absolutely critical to the success of all of our stakeholders in the ecosystem, and we work hard on these relationships with a win-win mindset.
We also understand that we've got an important part to play in our communities through supporting small business, and this is an absolute priority for us. We have a highly engaged network. We have endorsed training outlets and retailer consultative groups, and they act as the voice of the retailer for TLC. We also have embedded in our team a retail experience executive, and they're the voice of the retailer internally for TLC. 43% of our network have rated us either 9 or 10 out of 10 for overall level of satisfaction, and this is up 4% from the prior cycle, and we're enormously proud of that result, particularly given the scale of the network. So let's hear from some of our key partners now.
Look, we get a lot of value out of working with TLC. They have a very focused approach to sort of partnering with us, and certainly that's a little bit different to how some of the other companies that we work with, do that. TLC has strongly supported the work that we've been doing through our industry think tank, bringing our suppliers and partners together for the first time to collaborate as an industry on driving sustainability of our retailers. I think more broadly, thinking about how they've approached digital's been really important. We've seen the online store syndicates as a great example, that's really broken down that barrier, if you like, for retailers to engage with online and also what's been delivered through that step change in omni-channel commissions last year.
Increasingly, over the last five years, TLC's taken a more sophisticated approach, I think, to how it engages with partners like ourselves, to listen to our feedback, to listen to the feedback and ideas of retailers. And I think overall, that's delivered better outcomes both for our retailers and their customers. And so I think that partnership we have with TLC has never been more important.
Oh, look, small business is absolutely critical, whether it's a newsagent, a lottery kiosk, a general store, a gifting store, a card store. The Lottery Corporation is the major industry pillar within our industry. With the demise of print and newspapers over the last five to 10 years, lotteries have been the only mature pillar that's had, you know, exponential quantum business growth. So our relationship with the most dominant and key industry partner is of absolutely, you know, essential to us in terms of building that relationship and promoting and supporting the industry. The difference between TLC and the other industry partners is TLC really cares about our industry, really cares about our members, really cares about our association. Look, currently, we're in a digital revolution.
There's no question about that, but I think it's been really a great collaboration between TLC and the National Lotteries Newsagents Association, supporting that. And what I mean by that is embracing the technology, particularly around the online syndicates. So our members, in a retail environment, can be enjoying the profits and the revenue of online syndicates whilst they're sleeping. Yeah, I think that the TLC are industry leaders in regard to consultation with associations for the betterment of the industry. I honestly believe they've got the best practice in terms of consulting. Everyone has a voice. Everyone has a point of view. So that's all you can ask as a CEO of a not-for-profit association like I run at the National Lotteries Newsagents Association: to be heard, for due process, and then for actions, and-
... For me, New South Wales Lotteries is a really strong brand. It gives me the opportunity multiple times per week just to increase foot traffic. Obviously, with the different games each week, drives new customers in multiple times a week, and this has basically transitioned into sales across other parts of our business, like our coffee and our food and just general, you know, general merchandise.
Yeah, well, we've got a partnership platform as part of our overarching strategy, and the opportunity to partner with a big, really well-known national brand was really attractive to us. It's a complementary product that can provide incrementality to our business. There's lots of benefits. The fact that we see TLC as complementary and incremental is the first one, but it's also around the brand and what it means to customers. You know, that excitement of the potential to watch those numbers come down and potentially have a win. Like-minded, growth mindset, an organization that gives and takes is really important, and we've really enjoyed that relationship with TLC.
A really important part of that is being unique in each community, and the opportunity to, you know, potentially sell that winning ticket in a local store to a local community team member is pretty exciting for us as well.
Thanks to all our partners for joining us. We really do appreciate it, and as you can see, we have very close relationships with that win-win mindset. As consumer preferences continue to change, accordingly, we need to make sure we're proactively adapting to make sure our network remains relevant. A large part of why retail is so important to us is the presence and scale of our brands in the local communities, whether they're metro or regional, and that helps underpin the trust and integrity of our brands. There's been quite a bit of shift in the construct of our distribution model over the last decade as a result of the newsagent channel experiencing quite a decline due to the changes in print media, and accordingly, this has meant we've needed to evolve our distribution mix over time.
The average weekly sales in the newsagent channel are still the strongest of all lotteries channels, and this is really because they're in strong locations around supermarket areas, high traffic areas, coupled with an historical connection between lotteries and newsagents. While the number of newsagents in our channels declined about 15% over time, it's still our largest channel, and we expect this to remain that way for the foreseeable future. About two-thirds of our network generates the revenue generated by newsagents, which represent about 55% of our physical footprint. There's about 3,200 newsagents that operate in Australia, and we have a lotteries outlet in about 2,100. We see that any further decline in that industry will come from outlets that don't have lotteries.
So we position our product as a fast-moving consumer good, and accordingly, we make sure that we continue our journey of customer-led diversification, looking for host businesses that are well-placed and strong performers in the FMCG sector. Our focus is really making sure that we're in and around areas where the customer wants us to be, and that's those hot spots in and around supermarket precinct. We do a lot of work in understanding our customer preferences, not only through a product lens, but also to understand what their retail shopping preferences look like. We overlay this with what we see globally and domestically in the retail sector, and this is how we determine what's the most appropriate channel and place to locate our products.
We've also experienced quite a shift in consumer behavior over the last few years as flexible working has evolved, and we've seen a lot of people move away from CBD and centralized locations into more communities and localized. So accordingly, our focus is all around convenience, convenient locations in trusted host businesses. So while we operate a large and diversified retail network, it is really important that customers have a consistent experience regardless of the channel that they go into. And we work very hard to ensure that our customers' expectations are met through a familiar look and feel, et cetera. So shortly, we're going to have a look at a fly-through of a number of different business types, and this will highlight that while our host businesses are very different, the lottery's experience is remarkably similar.
The short fly-through we'll look at in a minute will take us through a convenience supermarket, a bottle shop, a newsagent, and a convenience fuel outlet. Our in-store experiences are designed to help drive increased frequency and participation and average spend through a well-planned and well-placed distribution network. Our strong brand presence is achieved through a minimalist but highly effective digital retail image, and this ensures that we have consistency of our message across the network. Over the last few years, we've significantly reduced the amount of floor space that retailers need for their retail image when we introduced our digital point of sale, and this has allowed retailers to either reinvest the floor space into other categories or actually downsize their retail footprint, and it's actually making it easier to accommodate lotteries into smaller, new, convenient locations.
This has been very well received by our retail partners, and it hasn't impacted our lottery sales. We've taken a more customer-led approach in the way we integrate the lotteries counter with the host business in store as well. Let's have a look. As you've come in, you will have seen our trade show set up out there. So we're more than happy to have a chat with you in more detail and talk you through some of the things you've seen on the video. So as I've mentioned already, our retail network helps underpin the trust and integrity of our brands. Our strong partnership with our franchisees is a mutually beneficial arrangement, and this is designed to encourage our retail partners to provide a customer experience and drive growth right across the digital and retail channels.
We have multiple levers that we can pull to drive the customer lifetime value and the digitization of our customer experiences, coupled with our omni-channel remuneration model that we implemented with our franchisees a few years ago, will help drive this lifetime value for customers. It helps us grow the registered customer base, and the locations and business types are important to make sure we're where customers expect us to be to support that. Lauren mentioned our DERM and Store Syndicates online initiatives, and these are great examples of omni-channel initiatives coming to life. We expect to have rolled out DigiPOS our retail image, to the majority of our network over the next couple of years, and this will help further enhance the customer experience in store, while providing a higher level of consistency across our vast retail network.
Over the next two to three years, we'll also roll out our new modern fleet of lottery point-of-sale terminals, and that'll help further uplift our omni-channel approach in store, while at the same time helping to reduce our cost to serve. The new point-of-sale terminals will facilitate more digitized customer experiences with things like the introduction of the shopping cart for retailers, an improved user experience, improved branding, improved security, a customer-facing scanner, which is important in the mobile phone age, and an improved ticket checker experience. All of these things designed to improve and enhance the customer experience. Our retail network is vital to the long-term sustainability of TLC, our retail partners, and the communities in which we operate. The vast majority of our turnover goes back into those communities through retail commissions and lottery taxes.
Of the AUD 590 million we paid in retail lottery commissions last year, that helped them to support an estimated 20,000 jobs in lottery franchises. This high level of engagement helps drive much needed traffic into the small business network, and this helps retailers to cross-sell and upsell merchandise from their host business. Many of those sales and much of that traffic can be attributed as a direct result of the lottery's business. In many regional and remote communities, the lottery franchise is central to, or in some cases, the only hub in the community in which we operate, and we absolutely appreciate the significance that those businesses play as our representatives in those communities. So to wrap up, we see retail as a distinct competitive advantage for TLC, and we consider this will be the way moving into the future.
Our large scale and cost-effective network of nearly 4,000 outlets helps enhance the profile and wide acceptability of our products with the importance of being connected to community as paramount. We will continue to adapt to changing market dynamics and consumer preferences, and we'll continue to leverage our scale to help improve customers' experiences through digitized services. And of course, we will continue to be strong supporters of small business and the communities in which they operate, whilst we maintain very strong relationships with our industry partners. We see a very bright, bright future for our retail network. Thank you very much, and I'll hand you back to Chris.
Thanks very much, Antony. We'll now take a break, and for visibility for those joining virtually, we'll recommence at 11:15 A.M.
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... Let me know when you're on. Yep. Okay, so welcome back. I'll now hand you over to Callum Mulvihill for our next presentation.
Thanks, and good morning, and welcome back, and congratulations to all our winners in the studio. I'm Callum Mulvihill, and I've been with the business for eighteen years. I think the challenges and opportunities in front of us today are as exciting and diverse as they were when I joined the business back in two thousand and six. During this time, we've seen the lottery business consolidate under our national operating model. We've expanded our digital reach and sophistication while maintaining our important retail footprint, which Anthony's taken you through, and we've continued to develop our product portfolio with some world-leading initiatives, Set for Life and the Powerball repositioning being two of these. In all of that, we've evolved and developed our customer care programs and tools to ensure we stay in front of and uphold society's expectations of us.
Now, in this time, we've also seen other sectors of the industry face intense challenges. Now, we don't intend to cover the dynamics of these sectors today, other than to say we remain alert to the lessons learned from these sectors, from community standards to competitive forces. Now, I've enjoyed my role since joining the industry, and I've always been connected to the core drivers of the business, being the product portfolio and our underpinning license instruments. So I'll spend a little bit of time talking to you about those today. First up, some insights into our all-important product portfolio and a slide and a representation you probably haven't seen before. I thought I'd share this view. It's the fifty-two-week moving average turnover view, and it's designed to smooth out the short-term volatility and show product and portfolio trends.
While we optimize game performance for the short and medium term, long-term sustainable performance across the portfolio is always our ultimate goal. The structural levers of game design and pricing strategy are carefully planned and work hand in hand with the shorter and medium-term strategies, which I'll take you through shortly. Now, clearly, Powerball in the middle of this chart has been a significant and prominent part of our recent history, but you hear us talk a lot about the overall portfolio approach. As you've seen, about one change a year to the portfolio has been well adopted by customers and our regulators, and continued to renew and refresh products and pricing to support growth. This timing works well, as despite the research and testing in advance of changes, real world, assessing real-world impacts informs our future development roadmap.
I'll go through some levers we use to manage short and medium term in a moment, but some reflections from me on this chart. Now, there are so many stories to tell in this chart with so many product changes, but I'm going to focus on three key products during the COVID-19 period. COVID-19 was a particularly peculiar period for a lot of industries and businesses, and ours was no exception. Off the back of the twenty eighteen Powerball change, which saw that game elevated in its performance, significant additional liquidity was running through all of our products at this time. Now, you notice from the bar in the middle of this chart, during the COVID period, Powerball effectively flatlined from its step change growth, driven by the twenty eighteen change.
Now, effectively, the story behind that was that whilst we had good like-for-like sales across, throughout all of our games, and particularly with Powerball, the extra participation in that, in that game in particular, really increased the win rate. There was a hundred and twenty-six weeks between AUD 100 million jackpot events. So whilst the performance of the product was performing very well, it was struggling to find the high notes that it had been designed to deliver, i.e., AUD 100 million and above jackpots. What I particularly like about the story, though, is the fact that Powerball didn't play the significant role, and we followed through with some changes during that period to our Saturday, to our Saturday product in March of 2020 and Set for Life in October 2020.
Pricing and structural changes to those products, our important base game portfolio really picked up where the jackpot games have heroed in the preceding couple of years. So it's just a really interesting dynamic to show that their portfolio can quite often complement, where some products taper off, other products will pick up. It's part of our diverse portfolio offering and suits the player motivations and needs. Whilst big jackpots grab attention, we value the role of our base games, and I really like this one as one of the unique examples in the power of our portfolio dynamics. Importantly, also in this chart, structural changes can take time for the benefits to play through, and I'll show you a little bit more about that in the Powerball slides in future.
As we've seen, Powerball 2018 changes are still hitting new records, and Oz Lotto took 12 months to hit some of its designed high note, high notes. Moving into some of the more active short-term management. While product changes and new products are critical ingredients to establish our longer-term footings, equally important is our ability to sequence and optimize offers and utilize game reserves in the effective management and health of each game and the portfolio as a whole. As Andrew indicated, our products are designed to deliver to a wide range of player motivations through the scale and wide participation, and can create some of Australia's most exciting events, and you heard Andrew and Antony mention the queues of people with the AUD 200 million event, and not just the 200. We still manage to get queues out of venues these days, which is incredible.
Then there's the disciplines around the effective utilization of our game reserves across the various games. Our prize reserve funds form part of the prize structure, so are actually players' funds. They are fundamentally there to ensure we can guarantee Division one prize pools and manage short-term game fluctuations, but this extends into the very noticeable jackpot sequencing, and I would break these into three parts. What I would call a normal sequence, where participation levels largely fund the predicted jackpot offers, and occasionally, we can also slow down sequences to avoid clashing, such as end of year mega draws and events like that. But more noticeable, perhaps, are our accelerated sequences, where we tactically utilize reserves to drive activity.
To bring this one to life, I'll profile the mechanics shortly of our record AUD 200 million event in February, that only came about due to one of these accelerations, and we're actually in one of those accelerations right now in the Powerball game. All of these principles and practices are constantly monitored and managed to adjust for positive and negative market conditions. So how do we continue to cultivate Australia's best water cooler-worthy events? Each of our games has its unique stamp, and part of their character are event draws. It's event draws. For some, it's a unique game proposition that appeals to a subset of our players. Double dividends for Weekday Windfall, for example, and for products like Saturday Lotto and now more prominently, Powerball, these event draws serve as a gateway to the category, where players come and try and then opt to experience our broader offers.
Our game management and marketing teams work extremely closely in short, medium, and long-term demand forecasting. Annual plans optimize and place event draws, like Saturday Lotto super draws, through key holiday periods and key retail selling periods. Promotional programs are then overlaid, and some promotions we leave flexible to adapt for market conditions. You'll notice we'll occasionally drop an event draw at the back of a large jackpot sequence, like, to pick up that extra participation that's in the market. To give a sense of scale, in FY 2024, the planning resulted in the following activities to maximize our portfolio results. The 52-week calendar involves the planning, promotion, and conduct of more than 800 draws, slightly more sophisticated than the one you saw out here, and far more when you include Keno draws.
Throughout that period, 35 promotional and special event draws and periods were plotted against this calendar to optimize and stimulate customer demand. Then, of course, there is the science and art of setting our jackpot sequences. I mentioned science and art for a reason. Many elements are in our control. Markets usually respond predictably, but we definitely have to manage many up and downside scenarios as the balls fall where they fall. To this end, we had 5 sequence changes during FY 2024 to optimize the portfolio as well. Now, for one sequence in particular, and one that I hope you'll find interesting, it's much talked about: what's the magic formula behind the most recent record, AUD 200 million event?
In short, the top chart illustrates the turnover benefits from accelerating the jackpot offers, and the chart below, the relative impact on our Prize Reserve Fund of a winning entry at each jackpot level. If only we could prescribe the formula more often. The choice between seven hundred and fifty million or a billion dollars over a seven-week cycle is an easy choice. It's clearly not quite that easy, and the aim, of course, here is to drive for material one hundred and potentially one hundred and fifty million dollar events through the effective return of players, of players' reserve money. As you can see from the drawdowns on the bottom left, the accelerated sequence, we are spending reserves at each level with the highest at a hundred million dollars. So it's unsustainable in the long term.
On the benefit side, we see short-term sales flow and participation in Powerball and other games, new customer acquisition, and high-profile free media. We balance that against the prize reserve fund spend, key risk levels, impact on other events, and of course, jackpot fatigue. In short, this sequence ran four times from November last year. It was won at AUD 8 million, AUD 20 million, and AUD 30 million, costing the prize reserve fund during that period. On the fourth attempt, not only did it deliver AUD 100 million and AUD 150 million that it was structured to, but it also delivered a one-in-seven-year event and a new Australian record, AUD 200 million, delivering record top-line results and actually building reserves at that sales level for future utilization.
Following on the Powerball theme, now, here's one that I know you're probably wondering why I'm showing it to you again, because we made this change some time ago. It's a good one for me to reflect on for a range of reasons. As indicated earlier, some changes take a while to mature and settle, and this fundamental product repositioning has done a number of things. It's underpinned growth over a period of years, still stretching its legs six years on with a new record high. It's not materially impacted other core games in the portfolio. It's played an ever-increasing gateway to category role, with new customer attraction and cross participation. It's proven extremely elastic when it comes to pricing, as its offer is compelling. Whilst jackpot fatigue is a thing, we've been able to manage it within the game, but also the broader portfolio.
And yes, it's introduced some additional volatility, but I'd frame this as positive volatility as we look at the long-term trends and performance. With all this being said, there is still opportunity for this game. It's a category leader, has shown great resilience and adaptability, and good price elasticity. Now, slight change of tack from revenue driving and growth activity. While we're extremely proud of our growth story, we're equally proud of our ability to maintain a balanced position in society and staying true to what this business model was established to deliver. Our growth has been achieved over a period that's maintained our total industry share at circa 12%, per the latest Australian gambling statistics data that was released last month.
Barring a few anomalies during the COVID period, 12% is sort of where we've tracked over the longer term, and we've still managed to achieve a fantastic growth rate. Important in maintaining balance is our ability to deliver our products in ways that help reduce the risk of player harm and produce our players access to the right information and tools to manage their play. We acknowledge that all gambling products have the potential to be harmful when used excessively. However, the lion's share of products in our portfolio, that is lotteries, instant scratchers, and in-venue keno, are, on any objective measure, at the lower end of the harm spectrum. This stands to reason when you think about traditional lottery products. There's very low incidence of problem gambling for people who only play lotteries. It's intuitive. Lotteries are drawn infrequently and are typically low spend....
Lotteries are a differentiated proposition to other gambling formats, and this is important to note as you consider potential risks around future regulation of the gambling industry. While the vast majority of our business has an inherently lower risk profile to other forms of gambling, we have a long-standing commitment to programs that responsibly promote our products, educate staff and players, and provide information and tools that work together to ensure our players can sustainably enjoy our products. Our program is pleasingly recognized independently by the World Lottery Association as industry best practice. We have a range of risk-based tools to help manage their play, which we've expanded recently with the introduction of mandatory spend limits for those playing online Keno. This complements existing player tools like deposit limits and take a break functionality.
We're also proud of the work we've done in our early intervention models, which have been developed with the support of behavioral and data scientists. These models identify potential at-risk behavior by players and we commenced reporting the volume of interventions made as part of our enhanced disclosures in our recently released sustainability report, and I think some of those statistics were in Sue's presentation earlier on. The success of these tools is enabled by a known player base, an enormously powerful asset of TLC, in both the efficient and effective in servicing our players now and into the future. To assess the effectiveness of our programs and inform future development, I work closely with the executive team and chair our Responsible Play Committee that reports through to our board committees.
It draws on experience and specialist skills from my team, but also the various functional SMAs and experts all across the disciplines in our organization. We never say lotteries are no harm, and we know that other products in our portfolio have a different risk profile for vulnerable players, namely online Keno. We continue to use research and player data as evidence to support ongoing enhancements to our responsible play programs, both across lotteries and Keno. We take a risk-based approach and use the best evidence available to us to minimize potential harm to our customers and ensure the long-term sustainability of our business. With this in mind, I'll note we actively engage with our regulators and governments on our experience and learnings and contribute to public policy considerations.
The current federal government review into foreign matched lotteries and digital keno is no exception, and we are constructively contributing to this review. If I can round out this section with a brief story, and I think it speaks to the culture within TLC. We have a partnership with Relationships Australia, a care service and advocacy group that provide help across a range of societal issues and gambling issues being one of them. In this partnership, we enable them to come into the organization and talk to staff, and we invite all of our staff, and we have the help service providers, but we also have the lived experience from a number of people sharing their experience with gambling harm. They're enormously powerful sessions, and what I'm really pleased with is the level of participation that we get throughout the organization.
A completely voluntary session, and I've got to say they are the most well-attended sessions that we hold internally, and I think it speaks to culture, and I think it, it's culture that goes beyond just compliance. We do these things to preserve our social license and because we believe. Speaking of social license, our actual licenses are the group's most valuable asset. These licenses, both individually and collectively, afford us the scale and trusted position in market to deliver against our core purpose. Our commitment to preserve and enhance the value entrenched in the licenses runs deep and is multifaceted. As I've talked about, our commitment to responsible promotion and harm minimization is embedded. In addition, we're proud of our support for the 50-50 Foundation and the planned expansion for Play for Purpose through the reach of The Lott app.
This further enhances our commitment to supporting our communities. We deal with seven state and territory governments and their respective regulators. We have a comprehensive and coordinated approach in maintaining constructive working relationships with all. This program allows us to maintain and uphold our compliance obligation, but also have constructive policy discussions in the best interest of industry sustainability. We view our custodianship of these licenses as a privilege to preserve and to build upon. Critically, we also need to ensure that we're on top of market changes, customer expectations, and new competitive models. We balance this with constructive public policy advocacy, whilst also utilizing as a source and motivation for innovation. Finally, we have a strong domestic and international partnerships that also serve us well, from our colleagues at Lotterywest to the World Lottery Association and many in between.
So how do we drive all this activity? I lead and manage this program and have the support of a large cross-functional team of and group of experts that have met twice weekly since the merger, more formally on a monthly basis. This is managed as part of a program of coordinated levers and progress reported on and discussed with our board. Not all levers are in play at any one time, but we are ready to adapt as needed. As you'd expect from an ASX fifty company that's highly regulated and operates government-issued licenses, we have a comprehensive stakeholder engagement program. At its core, this is about advocating for the sustainable lotteries and keno industry. It's in government's interests for a sustainable and commercially successful lottery industry, with circa 2% of state government tax revenues on average coming from lottery taxes and duties.
There's been a substantial focus on gambling reform in recent years. That's understandable as the growth in sports betting, advertising, online turnover, and levels of problem gambling has been out of balance with community expectations. When something goes too far one way, you get a reaction, and that's what we've seen so far. However, it's important to note that in all recent major gambling reforms and inquiries made by governments and parliaments, lotteries have been excluded. This is true for the credit card bans coming into effect in December twenty twenty-three for online gambling, and it's also true for the Peta Murphy-chaired inquiry into online gambling, which called for further gambling advertising restrictions. Lotteries were excluded because those governments and communities understood that lotteries are sufficiently low harm to be exempt.
This is sensible policy and was in line with our advocacy, as well as that of our partners, such as Lotterywest and our retail associations. As mentioned earlier, we're also participating in the review into the impact of foreign match lotteries and online Keno, and are engaging with the Federal Department of Communications. If I can leave you with three key takeaways: scale, integrity of operations, and trust, both of our consumer and of our stakeholders. These are the platforms when coupled with our license strength, our operational know-how, and our ability to adapt, that have underpinned our strong performance and resilience to date, and I believe will continue to underwrite it into the future. Thank you. I look forward to your Q&A, and I'm now going to pass over to Andrew and Antony to take you through some Keno. Thank you.
Thanks, Callum. Now time to talk a bit about Keno. Keno, we have had fantastic, consistent growth over the long period, which is really impressive. The reason that for this, we really see it as a complementary product to sit nicely alongside lottery. So what we find is that Keno, it's all about enhancing a night out. It is part of the entertainment budget from a consumer point of view. So it's complementary to lotteries in the sense that lotteries is more of that household budget, day to day. So that's why we see Keno. It is a lottery product, but it sits nicely as a complement in a consumer sense. Majority of turnover is coming from the retail side. It is focused on smaller prizes, enhancing your night out.
And the digital side is really focused on Victoria and the ACT licenses with our integrated omni-channel offering. Our focus here on the digital side is really about responsible advertising, doing that in a sustainable way to promote the business and complement our retail network. As Anthony said, our greatest point of difference is our retail network, and having that working with digital in an omni-channel sense is the best way to move forward. We have enjoyed very resilient demand over the long term, thanks to that strong retail performance post-COVID. We have seen record traffic in our stores across pubs and clubs particularly in Queensland and New South Wales. There is very strong culture of pubs and clubs in Queensland and New South Wales.
We also feel that we're in a tightening economy. There's been a bit of a downshift from restaurants to pubs and clubs, driving record venue traffic, which our Local Area Marketing has taken advantage of to drive strong Keno sales. Majority of turnover is coming from New South Wales and Queensland, and yeah, it is all about that LAM. Jump to the next one. I'm now going to talk about the new campaign. It is all about social occasion for Keno. It really does underpin our social license, and we see this as the way to be promoting responsibly, promoting around social play. It is intentionally positioned as a lottery-style product to increase that social permissibility and social license.
You'll see that the campaign, it does focus on the fun being in the playing with social connection, really focusing, a bit like lotteries, into the terms of the fact that it's easy to play. There's simple mechanics like Quick Picks to purchase. There's low cost and frequent wins. The social connection really means that where we see the sales peaks is generally Thursday to Sunday and, mostly 5 to 8 P.M. in our, in the retail sense. So the campaign platform is about Together We Play. It really brings together that fact that it's a social game that brings everyone together for a bit of lighthearted fun where the real win is in the playing. We see this as being a differentiator, key differentiator in the market.
The creative idea that the agency developed here was really to bring friends together to bond over a game of Keno, where everybody has a role. Whether you're the social organizer or whether you're the person that's helping to choose the numbers, or buy the tickets, or check the wins, it's all about that fun playing together. We'll now show that our new Keno TV commercial.
It takes a team effort to make a night out a night out. Everyone has to step up to the plate. Sometimes you'll need to call for reinforcements, good dog, and show them the ropes. It's pretty easy, and timing is everything.
Sorry!
Because when you play together, it always feels like a win. Keno, together we play.
Now, Anthony's coming up to join us.
So our Keno operation, not dissimilar to lotteries, is one of the largest retail networks as well. So we've got about 3,200 iconic pub and club venues that operate the Keno game. The other purpose of the slide that you see there is to really showcase the power of the relationships that we have and that Keno has across a number of our industry bodies, association, and key retail partners. When we look at key accounts, the investment that we've made in time in those relationships has been fantastic. With over recent years, we've actually gotten about 3% greater growth from the key accounts than the rest of the Keno network as a result of those partnerships.
So again, the same theme as in Lotteries, our stakeholder management is absolutely essential and strategically important to help us with the ongoing success of our licensed venue network. And I think when you think about Keno in the way that it's a very small percentage of the revenue for a pub and club, so those relationships become even more important. It's absolutely successful or imperative that we operate these relationships and partnerships with the same win-win mindset that we talked about in Lotteries. So accordingly, once again, we have partnership agreements in place with all of our key industry bodies across the Keno network. Let's hear from a couple of our key partners now.
We've had a tremendous long-term relationship with Keno. It-- I think it probably goes back fifteen years plus. It's always been a really positive relationship. Keno and pubs just work well together. The product that you produce, the technology that you've introduced, creates a great game. It's exciting. Patrons love it. It's just been a wonderful relationship. It's a social game. It's a game that people play with friends. It turns what typically will be a really good night at the pub into a great night, if you happen to have a win. It creates excitement, it creates conversation, it creates a great deal of interest, people watching the balls drawn out, and if you happen to be fortunate and have a win, it really adds to the night.
Look, I think what they value most about Keno is the entertainment that it provides and the excitement, and the fact that it actually brings people together. It's a very social game.
As the peak industry body for clubs in New South Wales, we've had a really long and proud association with The Lottery Corporation and the game of Keno. The game of Keno is really popular in over 1,100 venues across the state. Keno is really important in clubs because it provides yet another entertainment opportunity. It brings people together to enjoy the game, and it also provides another ancillary revenue stream for venues. Clubs contribute significantly to Keno's success, accounting for 67% of the total turnover in New South Wales. AUD 454 million in FY 2024. Keno absolutely enhances a customer night out. It creates a focal point for social activity and conversation in a venue, and venues, clubs across all of New South Wales are often the focal point of their community.
The Together We Play platform strengthens the connection between clubs and their members by focusing on the communal and social aspects of Keno. We're really proud of the relationship that we have with Keno, and we've developed together a relationship with Disaster Relief Australia, who do incredible work in times of need, and we look forward to growing that relationship together. Clubs enjoy ongoing support from the Lottery Corporation in relation to promotion and marketing material, and also technology upgrades. They've run over 780 promotional events across New South Wales in the last year alone.
And in terms of those local area marketing events out in the trade show, we've got some examples of what they look like out there, and they are absolutely critical to the success. So just the key takeaways in terms of Keno: We will continue to drive the performance of Keno in a responsibly sustainable way, making sure we continue to differentiate ourselves from other operators in the market. Responsible play will be absolutely critical as we continue to build our social license. We'll continue to build our omni-channel approach with the product offering focus in line with social occasions. And most importantly, we'll continue to enhance our partnership with industry stakeholders and venues, aligning our shared interests to drive value creation for both our customers and the community in which Keno operates.
So with that, I'd like to hand over to Adam Newman, our CFO.
Thanks, Anthony. Welcome everyone, and thanks for joining us on our very first Investor Day, which is an exciting milestone for our company. As Anthony said, my name is Adam Newman, and I'm the CFO here at The Lottery Corporation, and I'm proud to be talking to you today about how we drive value through a strong focus on financial discipline. My key message is that TLC is well positioned to deliver shareholder growth and long-term value through disciplined capital allocation, through strong cash flow generation, through digital transformation and operational efficiency. I've been involved in shaping our financial direction and ensuring that we maintain a disciplined approach as we move forward.
We are focused on three key areas, and as Callum mentioned, maintaining the long-term value of our licenses, continuing to evolve our business as efficiently and as cost-effectively as we can, and delivering long-term value to our shareholders. So let's now dive into how we're achieving this. We're committed to maximizing shareholder returns through a clear and disciplined capital allocation framework. Our capital allocation is anchored by strong cash flows from both our lottery licenses and the low capital intensity of the business. Our investment-grade credit rating ensures that we've got a flexible and robust balance sheet, and we are committed to providing consistent and reliable dividends to our shareholders. Since our results, we've reaffirmed our existing bank debt facilities, extending each of the existing tranches by two years on improved terms with our existing banking syndicate.
Some of them are here today, and we thank you for your support, and it's a great demonstration of the confidence that our business partners have in our company. Importantly, we chose to maintain the existing AUD 950 million facility to ensure that we've got flexibility for any future domestic license opportunities should they present. Our framework is designed in order for us to be able to return value to its shareholders in a tax-efficient manner if funds aren't required for both license opportunities or other opportunities as they may be. If we can now focus on the variable nature. Oh, wrong slide. My apologies. Let's just take a closer look at the composition of a typical lottery ticket, and so we can see how our stakeholders benefit and where upside exists.
60% of the subscription price is returned to players in the form of prizes, where 30% or more goes to government through taxes, and this contributes to both community support and essential services and underpins our social license to operate. Commission of around 12% is paid by customers on top of the subscription price, and is to our many retail partners, and is why the totals that you'll see here exceed over 100%. For most digital sales, TLC retains the commission, such that digital margins are over two times that of a retail margin. As you can see, our digital mix has been growing steadily and is a key driver of our margin expansion. However, all stakeholders, and that's governments, retailers, and players, benefit from our long-term licenses.
It also enables us to take a long-term investment horizon and reinforces the sustainability of our business model. If we can now focus on the variable nature of our cost base and cash flow generation, which are key strengths of our business. I love this slide. It knits together the information that we discussed about the composition of a typical lottery ticket and transposes it, if you like, into what you see on our financial statements. You know, I probably should point out, this is at a group level, so it includes Keno, so some of the numbers are a little bit different to the numbers that we looked at on the prior slide. If you start with our turnover, once again, at a group level, 63% gets returned to players in the form of prizes.
32% of our turnover is linked to variable costs, like taxes and commissions. This variability gives us flexibility, allowing us to adjust based upon turnover fluctuations as they may occur, such as jackpot-related movements. Despite the fact that our costs since demerger have risen, and this is particularly driven by the technology separation, OpEx remains a relatively small proportion of our overall business, representing 3% of turnover, which is lean for a business of our size and scale. Based upon our benchmarking, and then when we look at total OpEx to sales, which we believe is a better indicator of activity and then cost and revenue per employee, we sit in either the first or the second quartiles.
do appreciate that benchmarks are only really directional in nature, and there's many differences that occur between companies, between markets, and between products that make them, you know, sort of not definitive from a comparability perspective. As Sue mentioned earlier, the management team remains focused on managing our operations as efficiently and cost-effectively as we can, ensuring that we're able to maintain financial discipline, as well as grow the top line and deliver value back to shareholders. With separation now complete, we remain firmly in control of our cost base, which marks an important transition for TLC, and where we can focus on optimizing our structures and reinvesting back for growth. We've implemented a multiyear optimization program, and to date, that's focused on areas such as vendor contracts, shrinking our property footprint, some of our technology platforms.
You heard Lauren talk earlier about the replacement of our ERP and continuing refinement of our operating model. Now that we're fully independent, we have the agility to adjust our operations more efficiently and effectively and ensure that every dollar we spend is spent with a clear return in mind. Cost management is embedded at all levels of the organization, from the ELT down, and we are aligned on maintaining cost discipline. As we've mentioned previously, we'll seek to reduce OpEx growth to below normalized revenue growth. And then optimization, we've focused on releasing funds back into the business in order for us to be able to continue to grow our top line.... So for me to wrap up now, there's four main areas that, or four main points that I want to leave you with.
First of all, our cash generation remains strong, underpinned by our long-term licenses and our disciplined approach to capital allocation. We've a clear, ongoing opportunity for margin expansion, especially through the increasing digital sales. Our cost base is flexible, and we continue to focus on efficiency and optimization, enabling us to reinvest back into the business, to grow our top line and deliver value. We're confident that our approach will continue to generate shareholder value, driven by efficient operations and strategic reinvestments. We look forward to continuing this journey of growth and value creation together. We thank you for your trust, and we thank you for your ongoing investment in The Lottery Corporation. With that, I'm now going to hand back to Chris.
Thanks very much, Adam. Can you just give us a moment? We'll take the screen up, and we'll now set up for Q&A. And I'll ask the presenters to please come up to the front and take their seats. To maximize the opportunity for people to ask questions, we'd ask that you please limit yourself to one question at a time. But feel free to ask further questions once others have had a chance to do so. Want to give everyone an opportunity. We have two roaming mics, one on each side. So please, just put up your hand, and we'll try and get to you. I'd also ask you to please identify yourself before asking your question. It's just helpful for those watching online to know who's asking the question.
Some hands starting to come up here, so, with that, we'll start the questions and turn it over to the panel. Thank you.
Hi, guys. Justin Barrett from CLSA. Sue, at the top of your presentation, you highlighted that you do think digital is likely to become the largest contributor to turnover over time. As you see it right now, is there a ceiling to that share of turnover as you see it, or is it something that can continue to really push higher over the really long term?
Yeah, look, I think from our point of view, and it came through a little bit in Andrew's presentation and in mine, what we're focused on is that whether there's a ceiling or not is really about whatever the customer chooses. So for us, we think the best value that we can get out of our strategies is to focus on that long-term lifetime customer value. And we want people playing over the long term. We want them playing across channel for all of the reasons that we showed and the metrics that we showed that support that that is the best strategy for us.
So I think what we want to do is keep delivering products and keep delivering our offer in a way that really makes it as easy for people as possible to play across channel and to make that choice themselves. So, you know, we're not setting a particular target around digital. We really are saying our focus is on customer, and our focus is on the best experience we can deliver to customers, and where all that settles will be a fallout of that.
Great. Carrie, we had Adrian.
Oh, hi, Adrian Lemme from Citi. Andrew, you talked about the buzz that you saw on that AUD 200 million-dollar draw.
Mm.
I'm just wondering, we can see in the like for likes and the 100 million dollar draws, I'm guessing, aren't generating the same buzz they used to. So with these game changes you're looking to do down the track, is it an objective to try to get these larger draws, you know, two, three hundred million or whatever, to just get that excitement of the player, please?
Yeah, if we just reflect firstly on your observation on the hundred million, we came off the last one in February, off the back of the two hundred. So we went a hundred off the back of Mega Draw, December into a hundred, into a hundred and fifty, into two hundred, first week of February. We then had our next one in May, very close proximity, so that was slightly softer, but the most recent hundred was a lot stronger than that previous one. So we are seeing like for like growth at that level. Your point about the hype that we get the first time we go to a record, it's not possible to regenerate that level of excitement the first time when you get a record.
So when we went to 200, we generated AUD 10 million in that one week just in free publicity about the jackpot amount, and then the AUD 2 million in winners follow up. So it's AUD 12 million in free publicity just in that week. The next time you do that, when it's not a record, it's not possible to get the same level. So, the market moves over time, and we manage that market expectation, but, it doesn't mean that we go after... we just try and get a record every single time. So, there, we're not seeing fatigue, we're seeing growth at those levels, but it's not possible to generate the same participation awareness that you do the first time you go to a record. Adrian?
I just... Sorry, have my, just adding to that, I think one of the things that we've done very well in Australia is developing this very diverse portfolio of products. And, you know, Andrew showed that map, what we call that market motivational map, which is about having each of the products very strong in terms of positioning against the reasons that people would choose to play the products. So I think for us, in terms of this overall overarching goal, which is long-term sustainable growth, we're in a very strong position because we've made sure that we've got this broad appeal-
Mm
... in terms of portfolio products, and that we manage them well to ensure that each one has a strong position, and that each one is performing, and that then goes to our product innovation, which is about continually refining those products within that portfolio to make sure that we're always making sure each of them have that strong appeal and can deliver the growth into the overall portfolio growth.
The other thing I'd just add, Adrian, is it's a fast-moving consumer good. It's a low involvement purchase decision, and it's amazing. The more people that we get registered, the more reminders we get out there, the more participation and spend that we drive. So, we're growing that in a major way.
If I can add one more element to that,
Mm-hmm.
It's a complex one, and I probably should have put it on my sort of six-year journey on Powerball. One of the learnings that we've had since we introduced that change in 2018, which was a step change. We've had numerous periods of high jackpots and successive high jackpots where we've had hundreds and hundred-and-fifties on top of each other, and then we've had large absences. And sometimes what those large absences give you is a bit of breathing space with the consumer, and you can bring back another AUD 100 or AUD 150 million dollar event, and the market, I call it, recovers, and then it's-
Mm
... it's equally stimulated. So while we carefully manage the records, 'cause as Andrew said, the records are critically important 'cause we like to claim the record, and it does create that buzz. But equally, the market can recover, and we've proven that-
Mm
over that sort of six-year journey with the game. So there's been lots of, lots of learnings since we've made that.
If I may jump in as well, we,
You raised a very good question.
Dial wins prize.
Very good.
Well, look, I mean, we talked about the estimated retail or media value of the retail network, and, when we get to those hundred mil pluses, we've got a really comprehensive program where we support retailers with collateral, balloons, streamers, all that sort of thing, and that's about activating customers when they see those outlets. But it's about activating excitement in the retailers as well, and-
Mm
Certainly the first half of this year, the retail sector has been tough. So giving them some hope and optimism through our brands and businesses and getting them excited, getting the customer excited, is a really important part of the journey that Andrew and Sue outlined as well.
Can you tell we're very passionate about our products?
Hey, guys. Daniel Seeney, QVG. I just wanted to touch on, registered customers, which is obviously a key part of that personalization, marketing journey. It seems to-
Mm
have been relatively flat over the past, you know, two years or so, at about half of the active customers. Just wondering when you think you'll start to see a bit of a step change there, and what the key initiatives are that will drive that? Thank you.
I might get Andrew. I mean, if we talked a little bit about customer data platform, that personalization journey and continuing to get better and smarter at the way we do that, and I think that would be good to cover, Andrew, if I can pass to you.
Yes. I did, I didn't understand what you meant, Daniel, by saying it was flat. Which component was flat?
Sorry, I'm just looking at your disclosures, which you disclose active, total active customers and then active registered customers, and if you look at that as a percentage, it's tracked around half for the last four halves.
The percentage-
At about 50%.
Oh, registered versus total customers.
Yeah. Okay, so total registered customers, overall, it has grown. Which period were you talking, sorry, Daniel?
I think those disclosures have been in place for the past five halves.
Okay. Yep.
Just looking at that period of time.
Yeah. Yep.
I mean, basically, it's saying that we're having success in building the overall customer base, and we're managing to track, I guess, consistently with that, the proportion of that that we're bringing in to be active registered. I think then, besides the numbers, of course, is the fact then we get the benefit from the average spend of those active registered customers being much higher than the unregistered. It's looking at the numbers as well as the value of those customers. You look at those two things together, we're keeping pace in terms of the percentage of total customers that we have as registered, but we're getting more value from those-
Mm
... from those active registered customers.
Yeah, I would just add that we are growing the total base, and we're growing registered, and we're growing registered at a faster rate. This DERM project that we launched a few weeks ago, we've had good take-up with SMS and people being able to sign up quickly, and it's gonna be a great platform for future engagement with prize payments.
Sorry, just an extension to that question. Is there a strategic target about how many of the active customers you think will be registered in, say, five years' time?
Look, we haven't... we considered targets, and whether we set targets and talked about targets today. I think in the end, and I actually sought feedback from all investors through the results meetings that we had at year-end results. Ultimately, as you know, our revenue is very widely known because there's a number of very good analysts who write about what our revenue is by reverse engineering from the prizes paid. So we chose not to set targets 'cause there is really that visibility already. I think ultimately, our objective is to get as many of those total customers active registered for the reasons that we've spoken about.
Okay, thank you.
Any more questions?
Thank you. It's Matt Ryan from Barrenjoey. I think you might have just alluded to my question. I think what we've learned over the last couple of years since you've been demerged is that the market's actually trading your company very short term, and it tends to trade it around these jackpot runs. I just wondered how much you guys think about that as an issue? Clearly, there's a, you know, very long-term trend to growth, but what sorts of things can you guys do, I guess during a period, to maybe elude that volatility? So obviously the jackpot reserve is one thing, but are there other things that you guys think about in terms of maybe creating more sustainable growth every year rather than having these more wild swings in shorter term periods?
I think for us, you've heard me talk before about wanting to have a balance in the portfolio. So part of managing that long-term sustainable growth is making sure that we have this strong, part of our product portfolio, which is what we call our base game, Saturday, Monday, Wednesday, Instants, et cetera. That's certainly got a much more, predictable revenue path, and then having the jackpot games and driving those as well, and, you know, taking, I guess, what we can from those, from the upside of the big jackpot rolls. So that's part of it. Part of it is our story, which is about long-term, sustainable, growth.
You know, I think we're trading at a very positive multiple, and, and we should be, I think, for the sort of attributes that we, that we have as a business. We're still pretty early on in that, listed life as we, as we spoke about. I think having this session today is about educating the market as well, more on what's, what we're doing in the business to drive performance, and all the levers that we have available to us. So giving more insight, into that, I think is, is also part of it. Anybody want to add anything?
Yeah. I was just going to add, Matt, the Weekday Windfall, and we have had a big focus on base week games to take that volatility out of the market with Powerball. Then the change to Monday, Wednesday, Friday with Weekday Windfall, consumers were asking, "Oh, I just, just want to win a million dollars, you know, ease me from s- into more greater financial security." So we took that million-dollar offer for up to four winners to million-dollar winner up to six, three times a week. So we went from potentially eight to 18 with a small price increase. That's been very, very positive in terms of uplift. And then the next change we've got is, Saturday Lotto coming in the last quarter of this financial year.
So there has been a flow back in terms of product development, especially focused on those base week games, which is, Callum, you were going to add something.
Yeah, the only other thing that I'd add, Matt, I guess we're constantly learning from not only our own experiences, but from others around the world, particularly as I talk about pricing strategies on some of our products and the elasticity across the portfolio. So I think whilst the base games are super important to us, and hopefully that chart that I showed earlier demonstrates the interplay between some of the products, I think some of the strategies and thinking that we have today even differs from where we were five or 10 years ago, through some of the learnings that we've had ourselves and also from around the world.
Sorry, Justin Barrett from CLSA again. I guess it's a bit of a follow-up from Matt's question. I mean, we've seen Powerball grow as a percentage of turnover from 30% up to sort of circa 40% now. But you obviously continue to talk about the importance of a balanced portfolio. At what point... You know, a lot of growth has come from Powerball. At what point does that sort of become too big, and you lose the benefit of that balanced portfolio?
You want to talk to that, Callum?
Yeah, it's a good question, and I don't think I have a really crisp answer for you. It's... We've always tried to maintain a fairly even split between base games and our jackpot games, and the repositioning of that product came with risk and opportunity. It sat very similarly to Oz Lotto, side by side, and that repositioning, it's fundamentally worked. But as I indicated, we think there is still more room to grow, but that, you know, what other levers do we need to pull through the other games within the portfolio to counteract and balance that? So there are always different levers, whether they be price or structure, but we definitely are thinking about that and what is too high.
I think off its peak in 2024, off the statistical one-in-seven-year event, we got to 40-odd% of the portfolio. It's probably over-indexed slightly. But yeah, it's definitely a consideration, as we don't want that to be. It's certainly the preeminent game now, but we don't want that to be too much of a lion's share, if that makes sense.
Mm-hmm. Matt, I would also add that, historically, Saturday Lotto was the gateway to the portfolio, and for the younger generation now, Powerball, for your under forties, Powerball has become the gateway to the lottery portfolio. So now that we're getting people registered, and we can cross-sell and upsell into the other products. So we have been very successful over the last three or four years in whichever brand they've come through, being able to cross-sell and upsell to the other brands. So I think that's an important point as we get more and more customers registered.
I guess the other one, just to highlight, and it's only come out, change has been there for a while, but we look around the world constantly for learnings. Like, obviously, we have our own learnings, we do our own research, but, you know, the recently announced Mega Millions change in price over in the U.S., going from $2 to $5 will be a fascinating one to watch that play through. I always say the benefit that we have in Australia and within our own business is that we have control of the entire portfolio. Many lotteries around the world don't. Those in EuroMillions don't have full control of their portfolio. Those over in the U.S. don't have full control, and you end up with these, slight horsepower races with some products.
So, that will definitely be an interesting one for us to watch and learn from, and we take learnings from wherever we can get them.
Wow!
Hi. Ajay Narayanaswamy from Macquarie. Just a question around retail distribution. How fast do you expect, with the likes of the BWS pilot program, to scale up, as well as does this change in terms of retail distribution, does it have a skew in terms of the products that it will benefit as a result?
... Yeah, so in terms of, BWS or any other channel, we do thorough assessments. I guess being a franchise, we've got to be cognizant of the franchising code and the other franchisees that are already in the network, and we've got to make sure they can continue to benefit from the, you know, their franchise agreement as well as the new franchisees. As I mentioned, we have a sophisticated model that we use on a per outlet basis to say, "Is this gonna add incremental value for TLC and the franchisee?" So we would probably very unlikely we'd ever get into a situation where we say, in the example of BWS, we're gonna go into all outlets, because there'll certainly be outlets that won't give us that return or BWS a return, or they'll redistribute from an existing franchisee.
We don't think we'll get beyond what we've communicated with BWS this financial year of those 10 outlets, but we're certainly working with them on what that looks like beyond that, as we are with a number of other individual mom-and-dad operators and other groups. Like, for example, Australia Post, we've got about 300 odd outlets in the Australia Post network, and we're working with them. They've obviously got their challenges at the business at the moment, and they understand the value of having lotteries in a post outlet, particularly in those remote areas. There's lots of balls in the air to continue that growth, but primarily, we want to make sure it's customer-led and we're in and around those high-traffic supermarket precincts.
Any further questions?
Paul Mason from Evans and Partners. So I just wanted to ask about your segmentation information that you provided and sort of how you think about Powerball versus foreign matched lotteries in that regard. Whether you think they're sort of part of the same segment of buyer interest, or whether there's actually a whole new category you guys could explore there?
You want to talk about the product side?
Yeah. So, Paul, when we've looked at the customers that are purchasing those foreign matched lottery products, so we can track which customers have gone to their website versus our website. We can do Venn diagrams on that. There's not a huge overlap. There's a small overlap with our player base, so what we're seeing is some incremental turnover being generated there. I think there's a lot of confusion about that product and what people understand that product to be. So, yeah. Sorry, Sue, you were gonna-
No, I look, I think we're very much, as you know, focused on our brands and building the trust and the integrity that attaches to both our The Lott brand as the overarching channel brand and our individual, you know, game brands. So I think customers, our customers understand our brands, they understand who that comes from and what they're getting when they buy that product, and we're making sure that obviously we make that very clear out in the marketplace.
Daniel Sene, QVG Capital again. I just wanted to touch on instant scratchers, 'cause they don't really work in a digital environment, and we've seen turnover in that channel go sort of back, backwards slowly over the past couple of years, and it's not insignificant, it's sort of similarly sized to Monday, Wednesday Lotto. I just wanted to understand how you're thinking about that category strategically over the next few years. Is it in permanent structural decline, or is there something you can do to re-energize that channel?
So Daniel, instant scratchers, it's been an interesting few years over the COVID period. We saw some quite a bit of uptick in terms of turnover, some very solid growth. More recently, post-COVID, it has slowed slightly. We're changing the product mix to reflect the current economy. So, you'll see tickets out there like Loaded, which are loaded with tens, twenties, fifties, and hundreds. And that's been very successful in getting some uptick. The strategy more recently has been very focused, working very closely with Anthony and the channel team on gifting. So gifting for all occasions and getting the current loyal target market to go and find others that share similar interests. So, the gifting strategy has been very, very successful, particularly at Christmas.
We've seen huge high percentage increases year on year with Christmas gifts. So this is the bundling of instant scratchers to give as presents, which then gets consumers finding other similar consumers. So to answer your question, no, it's not a structural decline. There's sort of some post-Covid reaction there. But no, we don't see it as being solid decline, but the strategy moving forward is very focused on belief in winning and strong gifting strategy, as well as changing the product mix such that it reflects the current motivational drivers in the economy.
Probably just off the back of that, as we get deeper into the convenience channel, Instants tend to over-index a little bit in that channel versus other channels. So, we are seeing stronger results in that product, and given it's a retail-only product, that's going to be important to that category.
Interestingly, so scratchers was one of the products that benefited through COVID, 'cause as you know, we managed to keep our overall retail network open-
Mm-hmm.
-as they were deemed an essential service. And through that time, with other gambling options not available to people, that was one of the few times really, we've seen some positive flow-on come back into lotteries from that. Because usually being such distinctly differentiated products, that's not normal in terms of a pattern. So some of that was just, as Andrew is saying, you know, resettling back to probably what would have been a normal trend-
Mm
... had COVID not occurred through that time, and had those restrictions not been in place for other products. But I think Scratchers is a great product in the sense that it's a physical product. Obviously, retailers like it because it's a product that only they have. And it's just a very differentiated product in terms of why people play it, what we can do with it in terms of different tickets, and it's a product where we can more quickly innovate around-
Mm-hmm
-within the actual product itself because we're printing tickets all the time. So, you know, we can see and test different game play mechanisms, different prize structures, and then reflect those into the next tickets that are coming down the line. And I know certainly through into FY 2025, we had quite a good Father's Day campaign, this time round, so that's-
Mm
... that's been a positive sign, for instance.
It's also been strategically important for bringing younger users into the category as well, that under twenty-four bracket.
Ben?
Good afternoon, Ben Wilson from Wilsons Advisory. I'm just interested in potential growth in the age cohorts below fifty-five. I think all those cohorts grew at faster than the over fifty-fives in the last four years.
Mm-hmm.
But just interested in further growth there. If you look at the skew of participation across the games you set out on slide twenty-four-
Mm-hmm
... it's actually highest in instant scratchers. So it looks like potentially there's more growth you can get, more sort of penetration of those younger age cohorts.
I would totally-
To you, Andrew?
Yeah, I would totally, totally endorse that position. Yeah, I think there's strong potential upside for us to continue targeting that younger age group, create exciting products to get them to sign up and become registered. And yeah, I think what we've shown over the last four years is that we have grown that younger sector. Interestingly, they spend at a lower rate, and their purchase frequency is a lot lower. So as people life stage goes on, life stage does become triggers for purchase. As people get car loans and mortgages and face the realities of life, the opportunities to dream about life's possibilities get greater. So we do see more people signing up and people purchasing a lot more often.
So, you know, if you ask people rationally, "Oh, have you purchased?" and they'll say, "Oh, I didn't know it was twenty million." So it's just getting as many people registered and signing up as possible. So to answer your question, you're absolutely right. We do have opportunity to continue to grow that younger base, but to then grow frequency and average spend as well. And we have had some great success with that group. More recently, on the digital front, personalizing the offers to the average spend that they're used to and then putting a product offer to them at that price point, the conversion rates are very, very strong, so.
I think, further to that, when you look at our physical footprint, businesses like BWS example, their core customer base is, in that sort of 20-30 range, which is the sweet spot for, you know, building that group up. So when they go into those businesses and see our products there, they may not have seen them or taken notice of them before, so that helps activate those customers and gets them on the journey as well. So it's really important that we do have that diverse physical that complements the digital, and the marketing campaign.
Mm.
Rowan?
Hi Rowan Sundram from MST Financial . Callum, you mentioned earlier, you made an interesting point how sequencing can work both ways. So just curious, in the scenario where you have both, two major games, sequencing or jackpotting simultaneously towards a big number at the same time, is it a straightforward process, or how much science is there behind how... and the key considerations as to how you'd go about managing that?
Straightforward, no. It's nice to have counteracting forces within the portfolio, but sometimes they invariably clash. I guess some of the modeling and the intense modeling that happens on a daily and a weekly basis is really trying to assess the impacts. Sometimes we will be required to pull back a sequence, so we might have one lever set on one game, and they might be on a collision course with another one. We need to ready ourselves and, you know, work across the marketing and retail teams to get the network ready to respond and react. Fortunately, those clashes tend not to happen all that often, but the hard ones are around our Christmas period, where we have a Mega Draw.
That's a critical sales period for that product and for our portfolio and our annual plan, and we try and preserve that territory for that game as much as we possibly can, but it's a pretty dynamic and sophisticated process. It involves Lotterywest, they're our trading partner over in WA. All these decisions are taken collectively, and whilst we manage the process within TLC, it's incredibly dynamic and complex process. We've managed to avoid some of those conflicts as much as possible. Sometimes they do clash, but typically what we'll do is set those products up so they can absorb it, or the reserves can absorb it. Net-net, we're always looking at what's the total portfolio impact. Reserves are important, but what's the total portfolio impact?
And we're trying to maximize that, and sometimes some products will take a hit. And I guess you'll see that in your own analysis, where some outcomes will be slightly softer than their peer comparisons, purely because there's been a collision. So it'd be nice that you could beautifully align them and, but-
Mm
... you know, as I said in my presentation, sometimes the balls fall where they fall, and you get those clashes.
That might be it. Any further questions? Going, going, gone. Okay, thank you very much, panel. I'll now hand. You can step down if you wish. And I'll ask Sue to come up for some closing remarks. Thanks very much.
Just waiting for this, screen to come down. I did get told to make sure I didn't walk near it and get hit on the head. I succeeded. All right. Well, really, I just want to thank you all for joining us, today, and thanks for the questions, because we do like to have that interactivity. Thank you to all the presenters as well, for their presentations, today. I hope that you really have gained a deeper insight, into our business and really, and now can see why we are the leader in Australia's lotteries and, and Keno market, and also why we are one of the highest performing lottery businesses, globally. So, you know, our broad participation and low spend model, our diversified portfolio of powerful brands we've spoken about.
We've given you insight into our significant retail distribution, and the digital upside that we see, and also, of course, our defensive qualities, that we've spoken about, strong cash flow generation and the privileged market position, that we hold, and how we work very hard to maintain that market positioning. So those are some of the key attributes that we think make our business an attractive investment proposition. Our board and leadership team are very much focused on continuing to build on that proven track record and continuing to deliver value for our shareholders long into the future. So thank you again. We're going to call to an end the formal proceedings for today. We do have a light lunch outside and some refreshments-