The Na­tion­al Lot­ter­ies Con­trol Board (NL­CB) is bet­ting that gam­blers will shift to on­line due to the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic and is now mak­ing moves for the dig­i­tal switch.

This was re­vealed dur­ing a Pub­lic Ac­counts Com­mit­tee meet­ing in­to the au­dit­ed fi­nan­cial state­ments of the NL­CB yes­ter­day.

Mem­ber, Dr Amery Browne, ques­tioned whether any steps were be­ing tak­en to re­duce gath­er­ings at booth lo­ca­tions giv­en the risks posed if so­cial dis­tanc­ing is not ad­hered to.

Ac­cord­ing to Eu­stace Nan­cis, NL­CB’s chair­man, plans are still be­ing ironed out to take pop­u­lar bet­ting games to an on­line plat­form.

“ On the mo­bile gam­ing, this is at the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al’s of­fice and to give us some guide­lines as to how far we can go and to make sure all the le­gal mat­ters are in place, so this is at the com­mit­tee stage and at the at­tor­ney gen­er­al’s of­fice for ad­vice.”

In­for­ma­tion sug­gests that on­line gam­bling plat­forms gained a larg­er user base with the pan­dem­ic be­ing the main dri­ver.

The find­ings of one busi­ness re­port in­di­cat­ed that the on­line gam­bling mar­ket size is ex­pect­ed to grow from $59 bil­lion in 2019 to $93 bil­lion in 2023 at a rate of 12.0 per cent.

But even while the NL­CB is seek­ing to ex­pand its stake in the in­dus­try, there are con­cerns about gam­bling ad­dic­tion among its cus­tomers.

NL­CB’s di­rec­tor Camille Forde said giv­en the wor­ry­ing trend, the roll-out of a re­spon­si­ble gam­ing pro­gramme is on the cards.

“ This NGO (non-gov­ern­men­tal or­gan­i­sa­tion) that we are work­ing with, they have been work­ing in the area of ad­dic­tion they have been mak­ing re­quests. The NL­CB has worked with them in the past how­ev­er it does not de­bar us from work­ing with any oth­er NGO,” she said.

Mean­while, PAC chair­man Dave Tan­coo said the in­dus­try con­tin­ues to haem­or­rhage mil­lions of dol­lars an­nu­al­ly due to il­le­gal gam­bling. He said im­me­di­ate ac­tion was need­ed to pre­vent fur­ther loss­es.

“I don’t know if the Min­istry of Fi­nance or NL­CB can take this on as a pri­or­i­ty ini­tia­tive to stop il­le­gal gam­bling in this coun­try and stop the de­pri­va­tion of mil­lions or even hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars over the years from be­ing lost to the trea­sury. If NL­CB’s rev­enue from gam­ing is 2 bil­lion dol­lars and you lose a sig­nif­i­cant mar­ket share you know that il­le­gal gam­bling is re­ceiv­ing a sub­stan­tial amount of mon­ey that does not re-en­ter the sys­tem le­git­i­mate­ly.”