Tatts Group

Tatts Group Limited
Public
Traded as ASX: TTS
Industry Gambling
Founded Melbourne, Australia, Merger of Tattersalls Limited and UNiTab Limited in October 2006
Headquarters Queensland, Australia
Key people
 Robbie Cooke, Managing Director and CEO
Products Wagering
Lotteries
Gaming machines
Increase$251.96 million A$ (FY 2015)
Subsidiaries Ubet, Tatts Lotteries, Bytecraft, Maxgaming, TattsOnline, Talarius
Slogan Moments that Thrill
Website www.tattsgroup.com

Tatts Group is active in the wagering, lotteries and gaming industries with an operational footprint extending across every State and Territory of Australia; except Western Australia, throughout New Zealand and into the United Kingdom

Operations

The company has three divisions: Lotteries, Wagering and Gaming Solutions.[1]

Lotteries

Tatts Group has a near monopoly on lotteries in Australia. Tatts Lotteries is the Lotteries Operating Unit of Tatts Group and as of September 2013 the company owned or leased:

Racing and Sports Wagering

Tatts Group holds wagering licences under its subsidiary Ubet in Queensland, South Australia, the Northern Territory and Tasmania. Most of these assets were previously owned by UniTAB before it merged with Tattersalls Limited to form the modern Tatts Group in 2007. All of the licences entitle the company to the exclusive operation of physical betting shops which offer totalisor, fixed odds and sports wagering in their respective jurisdictions. The company also operates online nationally as Ubet.com providing racing and sports wagering products.

Its shops operated under several different brand names due to its string of acquisitions, including TAB, TattsBet, Unitab, and others. On 27 November 2014, Tatts Group announced that it would begin to unify all of its wagering properties under the new brand UBET in 2015.[2]

Gaming Solutions

Comprising three companies, Maxgaming, ByteCraft and Talarius PLC, Tatts Group both operates and provides services for electronic gaming machines (known in Australian slang as "pokies", shortened from "poker machines").

Maxgaming

Provides monitoring solutions and value adding services to the Australian gaming machine industry. Many Australian state governments have legislated mandatory monitoring for all gaming machines they license, this is to protect the integrity of the industry. Under this system Monitoring Licences are granted to independent companies who operate computer networks connected to all gaming machines within a relevant jurisdiction. All machine activity is monitored to ensure that correct prizes are paid and taxes are calculated correctly on revenue.

MaxGaming holds licences for three jurisdictions, New South Wales, Queens and The Northern Territory. Queensland is the only monitoring licence that isn't exclusive, nonetheless MaxGaming still has around an 80% market share in that state.[3]

ByteCraft

ByteCraft is an electronics specialisation company that Tatts Group Acquired primarily to maintain gaming machines. However the company isn't limited to gaming machines as its major contract is for the maintenance of Telstra's payphone networks.[4]

Talarius PLC

Operates gaming machine arcades in the United Kingdom under the brands Quicksilver, Winners and Silvers. The company operates more slot machines in the United Kingdom than any other company, with 7461 machines spread across 173 venues[5]

Discontinued Operations

Tatts Pokies

Tatts Pokies operated over 13,000 gaming machines in Victoria starting from 1994. However the company's licence expired on 16 August 2012 and was not renewed.[6]

The expiration of the licence led Tatts to sue the state of Victoria for compensation under a contract government signed with them in the mid 90's. In the contract that state government signed, Tatts Group would be entitled to compensation for the infrastructure they had to pay for to set up their Tatts Pokies operation. The government materially benefited from this infrastructure.

The government argued that the contract stated that compensation would be paid if "licences" were granted to any other party from 2012, but instead they granted "entitlements" to other operators and thus alleged they didn't have to pay the compensation.

On 26 June 2014 The Supreme Court of Victoria found that the "entitlements" were in effect licences under the contract government signed, and awarded Tatts Group $451,157,286 Australian Dollars plus court costs and interest.[7]

Tabcorp Holdings also sued The State of Victoria under a separate agreement it had made with government, however the Supreme court of Victoria said that their agreement clearly only referred to the specific licences of the time and thus Victorian Government owed no compensation to Tabcorp.[8] Tabcorp has since appealed this verdict.[9]

On 8 July 2014 The State of Victoria lodged an appeal in an attempt to avoid paying Tatts Group the compensation. Tatts has stated it will defend the appeal.[10]

History

The history of Tattersall's can be traced back to George Adams in 1881. Adams moved to Australia from England at the age of 16 and worked in many positions including publican, stockbroker and baker. In 1881 Adams who worked as a publican in Sydney took bets on horses which could be considered the start of the gambling company.

However, the company started a serious lottery when Adams moved to Hobart in 1895 a move supported by the Tasmanian Government. He set up his first operation there and eventually the company grew/developed in other states.

Inheritance

When Tattersall's was founded, George Adams structured the company so the original workers' families would inherit the profits. This created so-called "Tattersall's heirs": subsequent generations inherited a share in the company's profits. This was sometimes thought of as being unfair seeing people inherited the profits of a multimillion-dollar company (that benefited from a state-granted monopoly on much of its business) simply through birth. In 2005 the company decided to list on the Australian Stock Exchange "Tattersall's heirs" were now allowed to sell their stake in the company and for the first time the public could buy into it. After the listing on the stock exchange local newspapers and other news media listed the names of these "Heirs".[11]

See also

References

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