Double boost for China lottery firm DJI Holdings

DJI Holdings, the newly-listed Cheshire company which operates lottery games in China, has won a new contract there and also begun live trials of a virtual horse racing game.

The Knutsford-based firm which raised £15m in its AIM IPO and is exploring a further listing in New York or Hong Kong, said its subsidiary, Harbin Tengcai Technology Development Co, had been selected by the Heilongjiang Sports Lottery Administration Center  to supply and operate an offline-to-online system for HSLC sales outlets using the official Heilongjiang Jingcai website as the platform.

DJI said the new platform will create a link between the traditional offline lottery sales and the fast-growing online lottery channel by increasing access and availability of lottery games for players.  It will allow it to transact directly with several hundred thousand new players who buy lottery every day.

Heilongjiang province, located in the far north east of China, has approximately 5,000 independently operated sports lottery stores.

In a separate important development, DJI’s high-frequency virtual horse-racing game has now been approved by HSLC to progress to the final pre-application stage.  A live in-store trial is being set up in 40 outlets in Heilongjiang Province at the start of 2015.

Darren Mercer, chief executive of DJI Holdings said: “Both of these developments represent the continued execution of our strategy as outlined at the time of our IPO in July.  Given our long term objectives to be a leading player in this industry, it is important that we continue to create opportunities for growth not only by increasing our channels to market (consumer convenience and access), but also by leading through the provision of new and valuable games (content).

“These projects represent very exciting opportunities for DJI. Heilongjiang sports provides us with access to a significant number of daily lottery players and an excellent reference point to assist in our ongoing discussions with other provinces. We continue to benefit through new revenue opportunities building on our existing technology platform. We look forward to both of these initiatives contributing to our performance in 2015.”