Accounting Authority foreword
The past financial year heralded outstanding achievements for the organisation while also presenting unprecedented challenges for our business, stakeholders, and the world at large. The period kicked off with the NLC’s 20-year commemoration and ended with the global community on lockdown due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Truly, it is challenging to grasp the full reality of the time we are living in.
Supporting an enabling environment
The NLC exists to create a sustainable lotteries and sports pools sector, wherein participants will be protected against illegal operators and funds are generated through licenced operators to support the non-profit sector. Since inception, the NLC has licenced three operators, each to run the National Lottery and Sports Pools, with the NLC ensuring, among others, that proceeds from the National Lottery intended for good causes are maximised while safeguarding all lottery participants.
We remain mindful of the advent of 4IR, which has only been accelerated by the pandemic – acknowledging both its benefits and challenges. While the lottery industry remains competitive, local lotteries are finding themselves competing with foreign games due to the growing prevalence of these technological platforms. Online gaming is providing more options for consumers but also threatens the revenue generated by traditional lottery operators.
While the global lottery industry endeavours to come to grips with these rapid changes, the NLC is driving innovation to curb the scourge of illegal lotteries. Where operators are found to be in contravention of the Lotteries Act, we aid them toward compliance.
It goes without saying that the regulatory activities of the NLC are the foundation for the secondary mandate of funding, and our regulatory approach is aimed at creating an enabling environment for existing and prospective lotteries and sport pools operators to grow the sector and maximise revenue generation for good causes.
During the financial year,
the NLC continued to
steadily implement
the Lotteries Act and related regulations.
The NLC is the largest grant funder reaching 3 692 beneficiaries during the year.
Over R30 billion has been distributed to good causes since the NLC’s inception.
The NLC entered a third decade of operations with an invigorated vision and mission, now working towards becoming not only a continental, but a global innovative leader in regulating safe and sustainable lotteries and sports pools.
The Covid-19 pandemic has posed unprecedented challenges for the organisation, particularly concerning its impact on revenue for the financial year, as well as the way in which it has grown the depth of need that the NLC seeks to meet through its grant funding activities. In addition, the manner in which the pandemic has accelerated digital innovation and adoption is also of material importance to its business operations.
Though the pandemic presented various challenges and new ways of working, the organisation’s solid corporate governance framework and practices ensured that the Commission was able to agilely respond to the challenges that arose, enabling the continued operation of the National Lottery and delivering funding for worthy good causes to the most vulnerable in society.
The current economic climate has highlighted the foresight that was integrated into the amendment to the Lotteries Act as the organisation was called upon to be responsive through its proactive funding model in the face of unprecedented events. (For more information, please click here to view our Covid-19 response case study.
The NLC remains committed to social upliftment. As such, the NLC has reviewed its strategies to ensure that even under these circumstances, the organisation can create maximum impact and protect the public through compliance, monitoring, and enforcement of lotteries and sports pools.
Signed on behalf of the Board
Prof YN Gordhan
Independent Non-executive
22 March 2022
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