Privatization of Turkish National Lottery may Mean Online Milli Piyango Operation

Online Milli Piyango operation may be a real thing in the future since the Turkish National Lottery is expected to be privatized soon. It may mean a new era in the online gambling in Turkey.

Image credit: CNN Turk

Turkish National Lottery is once again for sale as the previous sales agreements turned out to be futile attempts. This time the Justice and Development Party government is determined to sell the biggest lottery operator of Turkey.

Minister of Finance of Turkey Naci Agbal announced that the first bids will be received on the 5^th of August. In other words there is not much left to the online milli piyango operations in Turkey.

Turkish gambling laws are known to be quite strict as the majority of the gambling related activities in the country are forbidden. The conservative government of Turkey controls all the gambling related activities in the country; therefore most of the lottery and betting related activities are provided by the governmental operators. The main gambling provider of Turkey is Milli Piyango. Due to the monopoly of this provider, the income of Milli Piyango is huge. If an investor decides to acquire Milli Piyango, it is expected to have online betting options due to the massive potential of the country.

Privatization of the National Lottery of Turkey has been an ongoing topic in the national assembly for a long time. However, there have been many obstacles preventing the sale of the major lottery operator of Turkey.

Privatization Administration decided to sell the National Lottery of Turkey in 2003 for the first time and the auction took place in 2009. However, the bids weren’t satisfactory for the government at that time. The second auction took place in 2014. Net Sans-Hitay OGG won the auction with the offer of 2 billion 755 million dollars + VAT. However, Net Sans-Hitay OGG couldn’t bear the burden and the second highest bidder ERG-Ahlatci OGG had the chance to purchase the National Lottery. Eventually, the government couldn’t manage to privatize the National Lottery.

National Lottery Revenue is TRY 2,5 Billion without Online Milli Piyango

According to Naci Agbal, the 2015 revenue of the National Lottery was TRY 2,5 billion. Her further claimed that financial power of the National Lottery and the growing gambling population of Turkey will attract many investors.

The winner of the auction will have the right to operate the National Lottery of Turkey for 10 years. For, private enterprises online operations are vital; therefore the missing feature of the Turkish National Lottery may be activated with the privatization. Turkish lotto fans may have the chance to play online lottery in Turkey in the near future.