EL/WLA Sports Betting Seminar June 2006

In June 2006, I spoke at the EL/WLA conference in Munich, Germany. US and European state-owned Lotteries are perfect example of companies that are facing disruption due to the Internet and new technologies.

In the lecture I talk about how interactivity has increased since the early web. I made a reference to a talk I gave eleven years earlier, in 1995, at a marketing conference in Myvatn, Iceland (see the picture in the slides) about the Internet and opportunities of a new media. I used the location, Myvatn, Iceland, to illustrate the change to come. You can be in the middle of nowhere and still buy a lottery ticket. I had a demo where I use my modem to dial onto the net and accessed http://www.1×2.is and bought a ticket. This was the first public demostattion of the world’s first Internet betting web site. History was being made. But to my surprise participants were not very excited. When they realized that you can be anywhere in the world, they simply wanted to know who is responsible for this so they can have the Internet closed.

Eleven years later, in Munich, I’m still talking about the promise of the Internet. The lecture was about new focus needed in sports betting technology.