Upcoming Iddaa tender for Turkish licensed betting monopoly
In 2008, Inteltek won the Iddaa tender to run the Turkish licensed betting monopoly for a period of 10 years. Inteltek is a joint venture between Turkcell and Greek lottery operator Intralot. 2018 will be the year for the new tender. I wanted to summarize my thoughts on the process.
The biggest change for the new period would be that the payout rate will be increased to 70% from the current 50%. The higher payout rate will allow the Operator to offer more single bets as well as live betting. Legally single bets and in:play betting has been legal in Turkey for many years. But Inteltek has been offering them rarely for risk management concerns.
Turkey is a very big market for any operator. With a population of 80 million, the annual turnover of Iddaa was about 11 billion TL in 2017. That figure corresponds to around 3 billion Euros with 2017’s exchange rate. Additional 40-50 billion TL turnover is fleeing to the offshore black market operators. The black market operators attracted great interest from Turkish punters mainly due to their ability to offer in live betting, single bets, higher odds and alternative payment methods.