Vicky Nolan Gaming Guru

fluxx.com Spins Off B2B Gaming Company

German lottery and betting company fluxx.com spun off part of its business, resulting in the formation of any-bet.com, a company that provides lottery platforms for online gaming businesses.

The any-bet platform enables clients to not only set up Internet lottery ticket sales, but also ticket sales via mobile phones, interactive television and bank terminals. Meanwhile, flux maintains business-to-consumer ties by selling lottery tickets to German consumers.

Although any-bet has been around for less than a year, it has already formed a deal that could make many companies green with envy. any-bet.com has set up Web.de, Germany's second largest Internet portal. The platform provides the portal site with games like 6/49, Super 6 and Spiel 77.

"They came to us and said, 'Look, what can we do?' and we created an application for them that linked them to the German lottery companies. So their players can now play the lottery online directly from Web.de and process their slips through to the German lottery companies," said Sean Keogh, any-bet's spokesman.

Web.de has 6.5 million registered users--mainly customers that have signed up for the portal's free e-mail service, but it lacks a steady revenue stream. That's expected to change now that it has launched the any-bet games.

"Obviously gaming is something that will always offer lots of revenue on the Web," Keogh said. The proof of success, in this case, can be found by counting the players. Web.de launched the games in mid-September. Already more than 50,000 people have signed on.

And the number of players is likely to increase, especially as any-bet begins updating its game offerings. Along with new lottery games planned for Web.de, sports betting is also going to be added. Soon players will also be able to purchase the games on their wireless phones and pay for them through an Internet payment service called Paybox.com that fluxx will offer its customers through its jaxx.de site. Customers can participate in oddest sports betting, toto soccer pools, event betting for fun, horse race wagering and purchase scratch cards on jaxx.de.

any-bet earns a percentage of each lottery slip sold, while Web.de gets a portion of the profits earned from the lottery. Both companies also split a commission derived from the sale of each lottery ticket. The lottery tickets are only available to German residents.

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