The ZEAL Group has grown billings, achieved a strong gross margin, further reduced costs and successfully acquired new customers.

In order to improve transparency, the Company reorganised its reporting segments: From now on ZEAL will report on the segments ‘Germany’, which mainly comprises the online lottery brokerage business of the Lotto24 and Tipp24 brands, and ‘Other’, which mainly comprises the business of ONCE and ZEAL Ventures.

ZEAL Group’s billings increased by 108% to EUR 140.0 million in the first quarter of 2020 (2019: EUR 67.4 million), mainly thanks to the inclusion of Lotto24. The Germany segment contributed EUR 139.7 million to this, billings of the Spanish ONCE business are not included for contractual reasons.

In a year-on-year comparison, however, it should be noted that in 2019 ZEAL offered a broader product range in the secondary lottery business (including ‘Instant Win Games’, the European lottery ‘EuroMillions’ and the US ‘Powerball’ lottery), which were discontinued in October 2019 due to the business model change. Moreover, Lotto24’s online lottery brokerage business has only been part of the ZEAL Group since 14 May 2019. The Lotto24 billings from the first quarter of 2019 were therefore not included in the previous year’s figures.

Revenue of the ZEAL Group decreased by 48% to EUR 19.0 million in the first quarter of 2020 (2019: EUR 36.5 million), mainly due to the expected revenue dis-synergies in connection with the business model change. Similar to billings, revenue in the first quarter of 2019 still included the secondary lottery business but not Lotto24’s online lottery brokerage business from the first quarter of 2019. Revenue in the Germany segment amounted to EUR 17.0 million in the first quarter of 2020.

‘We are on a good way to reach our goals, even if some steps of the transition, such as the complete technical integration of Lotto24 AG, are still pending,’ says Jonas Mattsson, CFO of ZEAL Network SE. ‘

The fact that every Friday in April EUR 90 million were in the EuroJackpot and that we were able to turn two customers into multiple millionaires during this time once again, makes our customers and us of course very happy.’