WLA members re-elect Andreas Kötter president for two years
People moves2 min read
The World Lottery Association’s general assembly in Sydney unanimously re-elected WestLotto chief executive Andreas Kötter as president for a further two years. Kötter said the WLA is developing a method with the University of Lausanne and international partners to measure illegal gambling markets.
The World Lottery Association’s general assembly in Sydney has unanimously re-elected WestLotto chief executive Andreas Kötter as president for a further two years. Kötter has led the WLA since 2024 and is the first German to hold the position.
In an interview with Kötter, he said the WLA and its partners were developing a method to measure the illegal gambling market. The project involves the University of Lausanne’s School of Criminal Justice, Interpol, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, the FBI, the Council of Europe and experts in AI and global markets. Kötter said the work required continuing dialogue with regulators and enforcement authorities.
The WLA represents more than 160 state-licensed gambling providers from 90 countries. Its members contribute more than $90bn a year to public benefit in their respective countries. Membership includes state lotteries, state-licensed sports betting providers, private lottery service providers and suppliers.
Kötter chairs the WLA’s 14-member executive committee and has served in the association’s leadership since 2018. He chairs the Eurojackpot cooperation, which covers 19 countries.
Kötter said the WLA had taken a position on prediction markets and was in intensive dialogue with regulators; he said financial and gambling regulators must sit down together and find solutions to current questions. He supported Germany’s GGL position that prediction market offerings cannot be licensed. Kötter said demand for help protecting young people and young adults had informed materials for lotteries, and the WLA was expanding its research on the subject.
Kötter said Germany needed more effective enforcement against illegal online gambling. He said offshore providers had established unlicensed secondary lotteries in Germany, where customers bet on lottery results rather than entering the lotteries themselves. He said those providers were already successful when the online lottery market opened and operated with low tax burdens and no licence fees.
Kötter identified cooperation among European lottery providers as a trend, citing Eurojackpot and the BIG CASH scratchcard introduced by WestLotto with Lotto Hessen, Lotto Hamburg, Finland and Slovenia. He said lotteries were being presented as events in Europe, citing Spain’s El Gordo Christmas lottery, but said online participation from Germany was illegal.