In a settlement decision dated 22 September 2015, the Belgian Competition Authority ("BCA") fined the National Lottery EUR 1.19 million. The National Lottery had used contact details which it had acquired in the context of its legal monopoly activities (the organisation of public lotteries) to announce the launch of a new product for sports betting, “Scooore!”.
For the launch of Scooore!, the National Lottery had sent an e-mail to people whose contact details were included in a database. The database contained, among other details, the name, telephone number, e-mail address, bank account number, and certain information about the individuals' gaming habits and the amounts of money they had bet. The National Lottery had acquired these data in the context of its legal monopoly activities. Therefore, the BCA ruled, these data had not been acquired on the basis of competition on the merits, and they could not have been acquired by competitors of the National Lottery on reasonable financial conditions or within a reasonable period of time. The use of such data for the launch of a product on a market on which the National Lottery is not dominant (that of organising sports betting games) constitutes an abuse of its dominant position.
In addition, the BCA found the National Lottery at fault for asking certain distributors of its lottery products to provide monthly turnover figures and information regarding commissions paid to them by competing providers of sports betting games. The BCA considered that, by doing this, the National Lottery had requested and received commercially sensitive information, and this had reduced the uncertainty with regard to the behaviour of its competitors. A dominant undertaking should determine its market strategy independently.
The imposed fine of EUR 1.19 million is relatively low in relation to the National Lottery's turnover. This is because, in the first place, the National Lottery was only found to have abused its dominant position for a limited period, and throughout that period it had only generated limited revenue from this activity. Moreover, it was awarded a 10% reduction in the fine because this decision is a settlement decision. In addition, the National Lottery benefitted from mitigating circumstances, because it had fully cooperated in the investigation and because the restrictive effect on competition had not been proven.