Emmanuel Macron looks to Camelot to lead €1.5 billion bid for French lottery

The French government wants National Lottery operator Camelot to lead a €1.5 billion (£1.3 billion) consortium bid for its national lottery.

Advisers to President Emmanuel Macron’s administration told the Evening Standard they want Camelot to take over and run the game when it is privatised next year.

The proposal is for Camelot — owned by the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan — to team up with French media company TF1 to take over control of lotto operator Francaise des Jeux. FDJ has a monopoly on lottery scratch tickets and is expanding into online games. It had €14.3 billion turnover in 2016 but is thought to have paid only about €90 million to the French state in dividends.

The government owns 72% of FDJ and is expected to sell about half of the business next year.

Macron has pledged to launch a flurry of privatisations in his bid to modernise the French economy.

Senior Camelot sources said no talks had yet taken place, but French government advisers said discussions would not begin until after the privatisation is confirmed in an act of parliament.

News of the potential deal comes as Camelot has been suffering a downturn in sales at home in the UK. However, French advisers said they had been impressed by its public-private partnerships abroad. Camelot has won lottery work in the French-speaking regions of Switzerland, Morocco and Mauritius as well as other parts of the world including New York and Kentucky.

Another factor in Camelot’s favour is its British-Canadian nationality. Advisers said France does not want to be perceived as letting its privatisations — also including Aéroports de Paris, and energy company Engie — fall under Chinese influence.

After the recent proposed sale of Portuguese state electricity company EDP to China Three Gorges, Paris stated that “the French or European anchorage” of the three companies being privatised will be guaranteed.

Sources said that could rule out a bid from other big gaming industry players such as Sky Bet, which was recently bought by Stars Group, a Canadian company whose major shareholders include Tang Hao, a Hong Kong Chinese casinos mogul in Manila and Macao. Sky Bet runs digital lotto games and its parent company has partnered with lottery partners in India as a route to sell its main business of poker games.

As one Macron adviser said: “Even after Brexit, a partnership with a British-Canadian group is better than a sale to the Chinese.”

The draft law on privatisations was announced by French finance minister Bruno Le Maire last month and is aimed at raising money for a €10 billion “innovation fund” announced last year.

However, it is mired in controversy, with opposition groups on both Left and Right lining up to attack the idea of selling national assets. Analysts said the lottery sale would be less controversial than the airports operator, however.