Atlantic Lottery ponders folding hand in Geosweep game

New Brunswick NDP leader Dominic Cardy says he wants to see to executives at the Atlantic Lottery Corporation held accountable for any money lost investing in the failed online game GeoSweep, which has been promoting a comeback in Britain by handing out money on the street there.

"This is millions of dollars we've wasted on this," said Cardy.

The Atlantic Lottery Corporation (ALC) is "following pipe dreams that literally end up with us handing out our cash on the streets of the UK. Can't really believe it's happening, but there you go."

ALC says it is evaluating whether to write down its multi-million investment in the company behind its failed GeoSweep game, following apparent problems with the attempt to relaunch the game in Britain.

"I can't really get into the details of which expectations have not been met," said ALC's chief financial officer, Patrick Daigle. "It's not performing as expected and we're going to be watching it closely over the coming months."

In 2011, ALC invested $8.7 million with a London-based company, headed by then-21-year-old entrepreneur Henry Oakes, who had an idea for a map-based lottery game he called GeoSweep. New Brunswick put up half of that money, while P.E.I footed the rest.

A launch of the game in Britain in October 2010 had been unsuccessful, generating less than $200 per day in sales.

ALC bought in anyway and launched the game in Atlantic Canada in June 2012, backed by a $2-million promotional budget. But sales in Atlantic Canada were poor as well and the game was cancelled by ALC a year later.

Still, ALC has always maintained its eight per cent-share investment in Oakes' company, Geonomics, was safe, with ALC president Brent Scrimshaw claiming he was optimistic that another relaunch of the game in Britain in late 2013, under the new name GeoLotto, would succeed.

"Certainly, given the size of that market, it’s important, and we'll be watching with interest," Scrimshaw told CBC News in October 2013.

"At the end of the day, we are confident the game will go beyond the UK," he said.

GeoLotto has been trying to promote interest in itself by sending a representative, who calls himself Dave, into different British cities to hand out cash to strangers. The encounters are filmed and posted online.

A spokesperson for New Brunswick Finance Minister Roger Melanson said he was not available to speak about problems with the province's investment in the British enterprise, but Cardy, who was an early critic of it, says it is time to pull the plug.

"The idea that there are paid actors wandering around the UK giving away New Brunswick tax dollars is crazy," said Cardy.

ALC is not yet admitting that its total $8.7 million investment is in Geonomics is lost and still lists it at full value in its financial statements. But Daigle says that may change in the next couple of months.

"The actual [write off] test is going to be performed at our year end," he said.