Atlantic Lottery gives up on $8.7M GeoSweep gamble

Atlantic Lottery is giving up on its $8.7 million gamble on GeoSweep, the corporation announced on Friday.

The lottery corporation invested that amount in the British company Geonomics in 2011 with the firm creating a geography-based online lottery for the Atlantic region.

However, disappointing sales greeted the game where buyers were asked to purchase square on a map of Atlantic Canada. The grand prize was never awarded and in June 2013 Atlantic Lottery announced it was pulling the plug on the game.

On Friday, Brent Scrimshaw, the lottery corporation's president and chief executive officer, announced it is giving up on recouping its $8.7 million investment by writing it off as a loss.

"Our investment in Geonomics was a calculated decision made knowing it brought both opportunity and risk, as does any business investment or new opportunity we undertake," said Scrimshaw in a statement Friday.

"It was a strategic investment made in response to the new business reality facing lottery companies. Competition is aggressive, gaming is changing and players are changing; we also need to change."

Scrimshaw added the lottery corporation is disappointed in the loss.

"We know that $8.7 million is a lot of money. We place enormous value on each and every dollar entrusted to us by our shareholders and Atlantic Canadians and we are disappointed that the investment has not performed as we expected," he said.

Scrimshaw said the corporation "learned from this experience."

"If we are going to continue to provide the hundreds of millions of dollars we do each year to help fund important public services in Atlantic Canada, we are going to have to continue to evolve, particularly in the online world. We will need to take measured risks," he said in the statement.

Atlantic Lottery is publicly owned by the four provincial governments in Atlantic Canada.