Uno Global Wants a Piece of the Internet Lottery Market

As the number of lotteries embracing the Internet continues to rise, a few companies are in the hunt to gain a foothold in helping governments merge lotteries with cutting edge technology. Among them is Uno Global Inc., a Middle East-based company with its sights on setting a new standard for secure, reliable and sophisticated, yet easy-to-manage interactive lottery systems.

Uno Global has spent the last two-plus years extensively researching, developing and implementing flexible and technologically advanced Internet gaming systems, engineered specifically for lotteries. The company was founded with the purpose of filling a need for secured, full-service, systems--a need that arose as more and more lotteries turned their focus to the Internet. It thus created a proprietary system and now offers three technologically unrivaled, ready-for-market products, all based on the same powerful platform.

The trio of programs--UnoLotto, UnoPromo and UnoTrivia--combine the real-time interactive power of the Web with the fun of the actual games themselves.

In addition to bringing the games to the Web, Uno Global offers the ability to stream its games to mobile technologies such as cell phones, palm Pilots and pocket PCs.

If there is a crown jewel to Uno Global's "Triple Crown" of products, it is UnoLotto., a program designed for use by government-sanctioned lotteries, their licensees and authorized charities. The system enables fast and cost-efficient individual lottery customization. The program was designed with the help of Technical Systems Testing to meet and exceed the stringent standards of fairness and reliability required by the lottery and gaming industry.

UnoTrivia provides a fast-moving trivia quiz game which, unlike many other such games, has the players competing against each other by answering various questions from different categories. The game can be played for money or for free.

While UnoTrivia and UnoLotto provide various games for the users, UnoPormo offers the unique ability to interact with both platforms and customize their use for each specific site. The program offers a marketing department a creative means for increasing website traffic, trial ballooning new products, getting to know the customer, building a data-mine and encouraging brand loyalty.

Lottery-style games offer a fun way to entice Internet enthusiasts to visit a site and extend their stays.

Interactive promotions are another burgeoning market. As e-commerce continues its explosive growth, companies are increasingly exploiting the Internet as a promotional tool. It is estimated that $6 billion will be spent on Internet promotions next year.

All of Uno Global's systems are able to support games on the site itself with an account for every client and methods of payment such as credit cards and prepaid tickets.

The sites are protected by Internet Certified Administrative Business Services (iCABS), providers of secue Internet-based credit card processing.

Uno Global hopes to penetrate the national lottery market and looks to do so in two different phases. Like many in the online gaming world today, Uno Global is taking the approach to first allow its games to be played for points only and not for cash. The second phase of penetrating the market will be done when accepting money transactions becomes legal.

During each phase, a loyalty club will be set up, for both the Internet and mobile markets, and members of the club will automatically be entered into a weekly sweepstakes draw.

All Uno Global products can be stand-alone systems or can be integrated with each other.

Some 200 governments authorize lotteries, and many additional ones are in the planning stage, and Uno Global considers them all to be potential UnoLotto customers.

Initial target markets are European and Asian state lotteries and government charities. The company is offering to state lotteries, which are not yet ready to sell over the Internet, the option to first operate demonstration and promotional games on their Internet sites.

Revenues come from the license and operation of the UnoLotto system.

The company is also focusing on joint ventures with the makers of non-Internet lottery systems to penetrate the Internet lottery market and is currently in talks with several key suppliers.

With UnoPromo, Uno Global can provide turnkey Internet promotion solutions to marketing and promotional companies and advertising agencies.

The company will market its service directly to marketing and promotional companies in the U.S. and later in Europe. The aim is to build long-term relationships with these companies whereby they outsource creation of their clients' Internet promotions to Uno Global. Uno Global's multi-level marketing and agent tracking module will allow the client to maximize the use of this medium.

The technological advantages that Uno Global has developed make it possible for the company to introduce UnoPromo to the market at a very attractive product price. In this way, the company aims to open up new market segments that cannot afford the prices currently charged for customized, sophisticated game-driven Internet promotions. The company will concurrently begin to market its Internet promotional services directly to end-users.

With UnoTrivia, Uno Global will provide Internet promotion solutions to lottery organizations by means of a customized trivia quiz. The quiz will contain personalized questions providing potential customers with essential promotional information about an organization's products. The product will be made more attractive by using sweepstakes in conjunction with other Uno Global products.

While Uno Global is unique in offering a fully integrated system for promotions, lotteries and trivia, the company does have some competition. In the Internet lotteries market, competition is from established suppliers of lottery systems and services, including GTECH and Scientific Games, and newcomers offering Internet-specific lottery solutions such as eLottery, Access and Online Gaming Systems, Ltd.

Uno Global considers UnoLotto to be unique in the total flexibility of the games that can be developed, in its unparalleled security and in the totality of the UnoLotto Internet and mobile lottery business solution.

Meanwhile, UnoPromo and UnoTrivia are unique in their ability to design and implement sophisticated promotions that are within the budget of the tens of thousands of medium and small-sized companies doing business on the Internet.

According to company officials, Uno Global is in discussions with a major joint venture partner in the land based lottery business that, if realized, will bring the company its first two or three licenses as well as an investment from a strategic partner.

The company is also in advanced negotiations with several large international communication companies and has begun discussions with several state lotteries to begin placing promotional games on their websites.

It recently signed an agreement with Cellution, a subsidiary of Computer Direct, a public company listed on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange.