As filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on September 3, 2024
Registration No. ____________
UNITED STATES
SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION
Washington, D.C. 20549
FORM
REGISTRATION STATEMENT
UNDER
THE SECURITIES ACT OF 1933
(Exact Name of Registrant as Specified in Its Charter)
7372 | ||||
(State or other jurisdiction of incorporation or organization) |
(Primary Standard Industrial Classification Code Number) |
(I.R.S. Employer Identification Number) |
(Address, including zip code, and telephone number, including area code, of registrant’s principal executive offices)
Copies to:
M. Richard Cutler, Esq.
Cutler Law Group P.C.
6575 West Loop South
Bellaire, TX 77401
Tel: (713) 888-0040
Mathew McGahan
Principal Executive Officer
Tel:
(Name, address, including zip code, and telephone number, including area code, of agent for service)
APPROXIMATE DATE OF COMMENCEMENT OF PROPOSED SALE TO THE PUBLIC: As soon as practicable after this Registration Statement becomes effective.
If any of the securities being registered on this Form are to be offered on a delayed or continuous basis pursuant to Rule 415 under the Securities Act of 1933, other than securities offered only in connection with dividend or interest reinvestment plans, check the following box. ☒
If this Form is filed to register additional securities for an offering pursuant to Rule 462(b) under the Securities Act, please check the following box and list the Securities Act registration statement number of the earlier effective registration statement for the same offering. ☐
If this Form is a post-effective amendment filed pursuant to Rule 462(c) under the Securities Act, check the following box and list the Securities Act registration statement number of the earlier effective registration statement for the same offering. ☐
Indicate by check mark whether the registrant is a large accelerated filer, an accelerated filer, a non-accelerated filer, smaller reporting company, or an emerging growth company. See the definitions of “large accelerated filer,” “accelerated filer,” “smaller reporting company,” and “emerging growth company” in Rule 12b-2 of the Exchange Act.
Large accelerated filer | ☐ | Accelerated filer | ☐ |
☒ | Smaller reporting company | ||
Emerging growth company |
If
an emerging growth company that prepares its financial statements in accordance with U.S. GAAP, indicate by check mark if the registrant
has elected not to use the extended transition period for complying with any new or revised financial accounting standards† provided
pursuant to Section 7(a)(2)(B) of the Securities Act.
The registrant hereby amends this registration statement on such date or dates as may be necessary to delay its effective date until the registrant shall file a further amendment which specifically states that this registration statement shall thereafter become effective in accordance with Section 8(a) of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, or until this registration statement shall become effective on such date as the Securities and Exchange Commission, acting pursuant to said Section 8(a), may determine.
Information contained herein is subject to completion or amendment. A registration statement relating to these securities has been filed with the SEC. These securities may not be sold nor may offers to buy be accepted prior to the time the registration statement becomes effective. This prospectus shall not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy nor shall there be any sale of these securities in any jurisdiction in which such offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful.
PRELIMINARY PROSPECTUS | SUBJECT TO COMPLETION, DATED SEPTEMBER 3, 2024 |
PRELIMINARY PROSPECTUS
LOTTERY.COM INC.
Primary
Offering of
50,000,000 Shares of Common stock at $3.00 per share
Selling Securityholder Offering
4,405,384 Shares of Company common stock registered on behalf of Selling Shareholders either directly or upon exercise of warrants or conversion of convertible promissory notes.
Lottery.com Inc. may from time to time offer and sell up to 50,000,000 shares of common stock, par value $0.001 per share (“common stock”). This prospectus also relates to the offer and resale from time to time by the selling shareholders named herein (the “Selling Shareholders”), or their permitted transferees of shares of common stock, consisting of (i) 396,789 shares of common stock issuable upon conversion of certain outstanding convertible notes which were issued pursuant to private placements conducted in 2023 and 2024, (ii) 463,937 shares of common stock issuable upon exercise of the Private Placement Warrants; and (b) 5,110,128 held by certain officers, directors, employees and consultants of the Company.
We will receive proceeds from the issuance and sale of our primary offering of common stock. We will not receive any proceeds from the sale of shares of common stock or warrants by the Selling Shareholders pursuant to this prospectus, except with respect to amounts received by us upon exercise of the warrants to the extent such warrants are exercised.
Our common stock is listed on The Nasdaq Stock Market LLC under the symbol “LTRY”. On August 29, 2024, the closing price of our common stock was $0.77 per share.
INVESTING IN OUR SECURITIES INVOLVES RISKS. SEE THE “RISK FACTORS” BEGINNING ON PAGE 5 OF THIS PROSPECTUS AND ANY SIMILAR SECTION CONTAINED IN THE APPLICABLE PROSPECTUS SUPPLEMENT CONCERNING FACTORS YOU SHOULD CONSIDER BEFORE INVESTING IN OUR SECURITIES.
Neither the Securities and Exchange Commission nor any state securities commission has approved or disapproved of these securities or passed upon the adequacy or accuracy of this prospectus. Any representation to the contrary is a criminal offense.
The date of this prospectus is September 3, 2024.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
You should rely only on the information contained in this prospectus. We have not authorized anyone to provide you with information that is different, and we take no responsibility for, and provide any assurance as to the reliability of, any information, other than the information in this prospectus. We are offering to sell our securities, and seeking offers to buy our securities, only in jurisdictions where such offers and sales are permitted. This prospectus is not an offer to sell, or a solicitation of an offer to buy, our securities in any jurisdictions where, or under any circumstances under which, the offer, sale, or solicitation is not permitted. The information in this prospectus is accurate only as of the date on its respective cover, regardless of the time of delivery of this prospectus at the time of any sale of our securities. Our business, results of operations, financial condition, or prospects may have changed since those dates.
Before you invest in our securities, you should read the registration statement (including the exhibits thereto and the documents incorporated by reference therein) of which this prospectus forms a part.
No one has been authorized to provide you with information that is different from that contained in this prospectus. This prospectus is dated as of the date set forth on the cover hereof. You should not assume that the information contained in this prospectus is accurate as of any date other than that date.
For investors outside the United States: We have not done anything that would permit this offering or possession or distribution of this prospectus in any jurisdiction where action for that purpose is required, other than in the United States. You are required to inform yourselves about and to observe any restrictions relating to this offering and the distribution of this prospectus.
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CERTAIN DEFINED TERMS
Unless otherwise stated or unless the context otherwise requires, the terms “we,” “us,” “our,” “ours,” “Company,” or “Lottery.com” refer to Lottery.com Inc. and its subsidiaries.
In this document:
“Board” means the Board of Directors of Lottery.com Inc.
“Bylaws” means the Amended and Restated Bylaws adopted by Lottery.com Inc.
“Charter” means the Second Amended and Restated Certificate of Incorporation adopted by Lottery.com Inc.
“Code” means the Internal Revenue Code of 1986, as amended.
“Common Stock” means the common stock, par value $0.001 per share, of Lottery.com Inc.
“DGCL” means the General Corporation Law of the State of Delaware.
“Exchange Act” means the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended.
“GAAP” means United States generally accepted accounting principles.
“JOBS Act” means the Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act of 2012.
“Lottery.com” means Lottery.com Inc. (formerly known as Trident Acquisitions Corp.), a Delaware corporation.
“Nasdaq” means The Nasdaq Global Market.
“Public Shareholders” means holders of common shares held by the public.
“SEC” means the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
“Securities Act” means the Securities Act of 1933, as amended.
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PROSPECTUS SUMMARY
This summary highlights selected information from this prospectus and does not contain all of the information that is important to you in making an investment decision. This summary is qualified in its entirety by the more detailed information included in this prospectus. Before making your investment decision with respect to our securities, you should carefully read this entire prospectus, including the information under “Risk Factors,” “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations,” and the financial statements included elsewhere in this prospectus.
Unless otherwise indicated or the context otherwise requires, references in this prospectus to the “Company,” “Lottery.com,” “we,” “our,” “us” and other similar terms refer to Lottery.com Inc. and our consolidated subsidiaries.
Our Company
We were originally formed as Trident Acquisition Corp., a Delaware corporation on March 17, 2016, for the purpose of effecting a merger, share exchange, asset acquisition, stock purchase, reorganization, recapitalization or other similar business combination with one or more businesses. On October 29, 2021, we consummated a business combination (the “Business Combination”) with AutoLotto, Inc. (“AutoLotto”).
Prior to the Operational Cessation (described in “Business” below), the Company was a provider of domestic and international lottery products and services. Our intention is to resume those operations upon receipt of required funding. As an independent third-party lottery game service, we offered a platform that we developed and operated to enable the remote purchase of legally sanctioned lottery games in the U.S. and abroad (the “Platform”). Our revenue generating activities included (i) offering the Platform via our Lottery.com app and our websites to users located in the U.S. and international jurisdictions where the sale of lottery games was legal and our services were enabled for the remote purchase of legally sanctioned lottery games (our “B2C Platform”); (ii) offering an internally developed, created and operated business-to-business application programming interface (“API”) of the Platform, which enabled our commercial partners, in permitted U.S. and international jurisdictions, to purchase certain legally operated lottery games from us and to resell them to users located within their respective jurisdictions (“B2B API”); and (iii) delivering global lottery data, such as winning numbers and results, and subscriptions to data sets of our proprietary, anonymized transaction data pursuant to multi-year contracts to commercial digital subscribers (“Data Service”).
The mailing address of our principal executive office is 5049 Edwards Ranch Rd., 4th Floor Fort Worth, Texas 76109, and our telephone number is (737) 309-4500.
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Risk Factors
Our business is subject to numerous risks and uncertainties, including those described in “Risk Factors” immediately following this Prospectus summary and elsewhere in this Prospectus. These risks represent challenges to the successful implementation of our strategy and to the growth and future profitability of our business. These risks include, but are not limited to, the following:
● | We have a history of operating losses; | |
● | The findings of the previously disclosed Internal Investigation and other matters have exposed us to a number of legal proceedings, investigations and inquiries, resulted in significant legal and other expenses, required significant time and attention from our senior management, among other adverse impacts. | |
● | We have been named as a defendant in a number of lawsuits filed by purchasers of our securities, including class action lawsuits that could have a material adverse impact on our business, financial condition, results of operation and cash flows, and our reputation. | |
● | Matters relating to or arising from the filing of restated financial statements and reports on Forms 10-K and 10-Q, the investigations and regulatory inquiries, including adverse publicity connected to these matters as well as other concerns, coupled with potential concerns from our users, customers or others with whom we do business, have had and could continue to have an adverse effect on our business and financial condition. | |
● | In July 2022, the Company furloughed the majority of its employees and suspended lottery game sales operations after determining that it did not have sufficient financial resources to fund its operations or pay certain existing obligations, including payroll and related obligations. As a result, the Company may not be able to continue as a going concern. | |
● | We need to implement and maintain an effective system of internal controls. | |
● | We may be unable to continue to use the domain names that we use in our business, as well as our other intellectual property, or prevent third parties from acquiring and using domain names or trademarks and other intellectual property that infringe on, are similar to, or otherwise decrease the value of our brand, trademarks, or service marks. | |
● | Although we are currently in full compliance with the continued listing standards of Nasdaq, we may not be able to remain in full compliance with Nasdaq’s continued listing standards in the future. | |
● | We have significant risks relating to existing loan agreements and loan agreement warrants. | |
● | We rely on information technology and infrastructure for security of our products. | |
● | Public health epidemics or outbreaks (such as the novel strain of coronavirus (COVID-19)) could adversely impact our business; | |
● | We require additional capital to restart our operations and may not be able to obtain sufficient additional capital to continue our operations; | |
● | We have currently ceased operations and will be required to recommence operations | |
● | The lottery industry is heavily regulated in the United States, and if we fail to comply with these laws and governmental regulations, we could incur penalties or be required to make significant changes to our operations or even face criminal or civil sanctions; | |
● | We may be unable to consistently retain or hire third-party suppliers or other service providers to produce our products; | |
● | We will depend on a limited number of partners for the majority of our revenue; | |
● | There may be unanticipated delays in the development and introduction of our current and future products and we may be unable to control costs; | |
● | Significant competition; | |
● | Potential third-party infringement claims; | |
● | Risks associated with our current and potential acquisitions related to costs and integration into our product line; | |
● | We are subject to significant regulatory requirements; | |
● | Our stock is subject to dilution through future sale of shares or conversion of existing convertible securities; | |
● | A significant portion of our stock is held by our officers and directors; | |
● | We depend on our management and key personnel for our success; | |
● | The market price for our common stock has been and may continue to be volatile; | |
● | Adequate protection of confidential information; | |
● | Potential litigation from competitors and claims from customers; | |
● | Our ability to adequately protect the intellectual property used to produce our products; and | |
● | Our ability to stay abreast of modified or new laws and regulations applying to our business. |
In addition, the management of the Company has concluded that its historical recurring losses from operations and negative cash flows from operations as well as its dependence on securing private equity and other financings raise substantial doubt about its ability to continue as a going concern and the auditor of the Company has included an explanatory paragraph relating to its ability to continue as a going concern in its audit report for the years ended December 31, 2023 and 2022.
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THE OFFERING
Issuer | Lottery.com Inc. | |
Common Shares offered by us | 50,000,000 shares of Common Stock, par value $0.001 per share, at an offering price of $3.00 per share. The actual offering price per share will be as determined by us based on market conditions at the time of pricing. Therefore, the assumed public offering price used throughout this prospectus may not be indicative of the final offering price. | |
Common stock outstanding before this offering | 9,970,941 shares of common stock.; not including 463,937 shares of common stock issuable upon exercise of the Private Placement Warrants and 396,789 shares issuable upon conversion of outstanding convertible notes. | |
Common Stock outstanding after this offering | 59,970,941 assuming all shares of common stock offered in this offering are sold (again not including 463,937 shares of common stock issuable upon exercise of the Private Placement Warrants and 396,789 shares issuable upon conversion of outstanding convertible notes). | |
Use of proceeds | We estimate that the net proceeds to us from this offering will be approximately $138,000,000 assuming a public offering price of $3.00 per Common Share after deducting potential underwriting discounts and commissions and estimated offering expenses payable by us. We intend to use the net proceeds from this offering (i) for our operations; (ii) for acquisitions; (iii) for product development and (iv) for general and administration and working capital purposes. See “Use of Proceeds” on page 44 of this Prospectus.
| |
Common Shares offered by Selling Shareholders | (a) 396,789 shares of common stock issuable upon conversion of certain outstanding convertible notes which were issued pursuant to private placements conducted in 2023 and 2024, (ii) 463,937 shares of common stock issuable upon exercise of the Private Placement Warrants; and (b) 5,110,128 held by certain officers, directors, employees and consultants of the Company. | |
Risk Factors | Investing in our securities is highly speculative and involves a high degree of risk. See “Risk Factors” and other information appearing elsewhere in this prospectus for a discussion of factors you should carefully consider before deciding whether to invest in our common stock. | |
Transfer Agent | The transfer agent and registrar for our common shares is Continental Stock Transfer and Trust, 1 State Street 30th Floor, New York, NY 10004. | |
Market for the common stock | Our common stock is currently quoted on the NASDAQ Capital Market under the symbols “LTRY” and “LTRYW”.” On August 29, 2024, the last reported sale price of our common stock was $0.77. |
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RISK FACTORS
We have identified the following risks and uncertainties that may have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition, results of operations or reputation. The risks described below are not the only risks we face. Additional risks not presently known to us or that we currently believe are not material may also significantly affect our business, financial condition, results of operations or reputation. Our business could be harmed by any of these risks. The risk factors described below should be read together with the other information set forth in this Prospectus, including our consolidated financial statements and the related notes, as well as in other documents that we file with the SEC.
Risks Relating to the Internal Investigation, Restatement of our Consolidated Financial Statements, Our Ability to Continue as a Going Concern, Our Internal Controls and Related Matters
The findings of the previously disclosed Internal Investigation and other matters have exposed us to a number of legal proceedings, investigations and inquiries, resulted in significant legal and other expenses, required significant time and attention from our senior management, among other adverse impacts.
As disclosed in the Company’s Current Reports on Form 8-K, initially filed with the SEC on July 6, 2022 and July 22, 2022, the Board retained outside counsel to conduct the Internal Investigation that revealed instances of non-compliance with state and federal laws concerning the state in which tickets are procured as well as order fulfillment, and issues pertaining to the Company’s internal accounting controls.
Certain of these issues contributed to the Company’s auditors’ determination that the Company’s audited financial statements for the year ended December 31, 2021 and the unaudited financial statement for the quarter ended March 31, 2022, should no longer be relied upon and required restatement.
As a consequence, on May 10, 2023 and May 15, 2023 respectively, the Company filed with the SEC as amended reports the required restatements of its year-end report for December 31, 2021 and for the quarter ended March 31, 2022.
The aforementioned issues have had and could continue to have material adverse impacts on the Company. The Company and certain of our former officers are the subject of a number of legal proceedings, investigations and inquiries with respect to cited issues and have been named as a defendant in a number of lawsuits, including class action lawsuits. The Company incurred significant costs in connection with the Internal Investigation, including legal expenses and costs associated with the restatement and adjustment of our financial statements. We may also incur material costs associated with our indemnification arrangements with our current and former directors and certain of our officers, as well as other indemnitees. Moreover, an unfavorable outcome in any of these matters could result in significant damages, additional penalties or other remedies imposed against the Company, or our current or former directors or officers, which could harm our reputation, business, financial condition, results of operations or cash flows. In addition, an unfavorable outcome in any of these matters could exceed coverage provided, if any, under potentially applicable insurance policies, which is limited. For example, we currently do not have an effective director and officer liability insurance policy in place for our current officers and directors and may not have the financial resources or otherwise be able to obtain a director and officer liability insurance at reasonable cost or terms in the future. These issues have also led to material adverse impacts on our operations, our reputation and our relationships with business partners, as well as material adverse impacts on our financial position, including incurred costs and expenses and our ability to raise new capital in the future. Further, our senior management team has devoted significant time to facilitate the Internal Investigation and is expected to continue to devote significant time and efforts to address the impacts associated with or arising from the Internal Investigation.
We cannot predict all impacts on the Company in connection with or arising from any of the foregoing. Any unknown or new risks might result in a material adverse effect on us.
We and certain of our former officers are, and in the future, we or our officers and directors may become, the subject of legal proceedings, investigations and inquiries by governmental agencies with respect to the findings of the Internal Investigation and other matters, which could have a material adverse effect on our reputation, business, financial condition, cash flows and results of operations, and could result in additional claims and material liabilities.
Certain of our former officers are currently the subject of investigations and inquiries by the SEC and the U.S. Department of Justice (the “DOJ”). The Company is cooperating fully with such investigations and inquiries. In the future, we or our officers and directors may become the subject of legal proceedings, investigations, and inquiries by governmental agencies in various jurisdictions relating to the findings of the Internal Investigation and other matters.
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These investigations and inquiries and any other similar or related future legal proceedings, investigations or inquiries are subject to inherent uncertainties, and the actual costs that may be incurred relating to these matters depend upon many unknown factors. We are unable to predict the outcome of any of these legal proceedings, investigations, and inquiries, and we could be forced to expend significant resources in the defense of one or more of these actions. There is also the risk that we may not prevail in any proceeding involving us. Cooperating with, as well as monitoring and defending against, any of these actions is time-consuming for management and detracts from their ability to fully focus our internal resources pertaining to our business operations. In addition, we have already incurred and may continue to incur substantial legal fees and costs as well as internal administrative time, in connection with such matters. We are also generally obligated, to the extent permitted by law, when applicable, to indemnify our current and former directors and officers who may be named in these or similar actions; moreover, we do not currently have an effective director and officer liability insurance policy in place for our current officers and directors. We are not currently able to estimate the possible cost to us from these matters, as we cannot be certain how long they may take to resolve or the possible amount of any civil penalties or damages, if any, that we may be required to pay. It is possible that we could, in the future, incur judgments or enter into settlements of claims for monetary damages. Decisions adverse to our interests in these actions could result in damages, fines, penalties, consent orders or other sanctions against the Company or our officers, or in changes to our business practices, among others, any of which could have a material adverse effect on our cash flow, results of operations and financial position.
Furthermore, publicity surrounding any such proceeding, investigation or inquiry or any enforcement action as a result thereof, even if ultimately resolved favorably for us, coupled with the intensified public scrutiny of our Company and certain of its practices, could result in additional investigations and legal proceedings. As a result, such proceedings, investigations and inquiries could have a material adverse effect on our reputation, business, financial condition, including our ability to raise new capital, cash flows and results of operations and could cause our securities to decline in value or become worthless.
We have been named as a defendant in a number of lawsuits filed by purchasers of our securities, including class action lawsuits that could have a material adverse impact on our business, financial condition, results of operation and cash flows, and our reputation.
We have been named as a defendant in a number of lawsuits filed by purchasers of our securities, including class action lawsuits and will have to defend against such suits, including any appeals of such suits should our initial defenses be unsuccessful. We are currently unable to estimate the possible loss or possible range of loss, if any, associated with the resolution of these suits. In the event that our initial defenses of these suits are unsuccessful, there can be no assurance that we will prevail in any appeal.
We cannot predict the outcome of these lawsuits. The matters that led to our Internal Investigation and our financial restatement have exposed us to increased risks of litigation, regulatory proceedings and government enforcement actions. We and our current and former directors and officers may, in the future, be subject to additional litigation relating to such matters. Subject to certain limitations, we are obligated to indemnify our current and former directors and officers in connection with such lawsuits and any related litigation or settlements amounts. Regardless of the outcome, these lawsuits, and any other litigation that may be brought against us or our current or former directors and officers, could be time-consuming, result in significant expense and divert the attention and resources of our management and other key employees. An unfavorable outcome in any of these matters could result in significant damages, additional penalties or other remedies imposed against us, our current or former directors or officers, which could harm our reputation, business, financial condition, results of operations or cash flows. In addition, an unfavorable outcome in any of these matters could exceed coverage provided, if any, under potentially applicable insurance policies, which is limited. Following disclosure of the results of our Internal Investigation, we have had difficulties in obtaining desirable insurance coverage, or any insurance coverage, regarding legal proceedings, investigations and inquiries, and we cannot assure you with any certainty that we will be able to obtain such coverage in the future.
Matters relating to or arising from the filing of restated financial statements and Forms 10-K and 10-Q, the investigations and regulatory inquiries, including adverse publicity connected to these matters as well as other concerns, coupled with potential concerns from our users, customers or others with whom we do business, have had and could continue to have an adverse effect on our business and financial condition.
We have been and could continue to be the subject of negative publicity focusing on the Internal Investigation and the restatements and adjustments to our financial statements, and we may be adversely impacted by negative reactions from our users, customers or others with whom we do business. Concerns include the perception of the effort required to address our accounting and control environment, and the ability for us to be a long-term provider to our customers. Continued adverse publicity and potential concerns from our customers and business partners or others could harm our business and have an adverse effect on our financial condition.
In July 2022, the Company furloughed the majority of its employees and suspended lottery game sales operations after determining that it did not have sufficient financial resources to fund its operations or pay certain existing obligations, including payroll and related obligations. As a result, the Company may not be able to continue as a going concern.
In July 2022, the Company furloughed the majority of our employees and ceased its operations after determining that it did not have sufficient financial resources to fund our operations or pay certain existing obligations, including payroll and related obligations. As of December 31, 2023, the Company owed approximately $3.85 million in outstanding payroll obligations, which amount remains unpaid. Since our business is largely dependent on the efforts and talents of our employees and contractors, particularly those who are our developers and engineers, and the provision of ongoing services to customers by our employees and contractors, the loss of these employees and contractors could result in the inability of the Company to operate its business and technology, meet its obligations to customers, maintain key customer relationships and revenue, and fulfill its contractual obligations.
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In order for the Company to fully restart its operations, it must raise sufficient capital to re-hire or hire additional employees. Qualified employees may not be available for hire, or may require salaries or benefits in excess of what we paid persons in similar positions previously, due to among other things, inflation and other economic factors, the need to hire such persons away from their current jobs and the negative impact that the furlough has had on our reputation.
If we are not able to restart our operations, hire new employees and engage new contractors, and obtain funding sufficient to support and restart our operations, we may be forced to permanently cease our operations, sell off our assets and operations, or seek bankruptcy protection or a corporate reorganization, which could cause the value of our securities to become worthless, or at best, become devalued in the marketplace
These conditions, along with our current lack of material revenue producing activities, and significant debt, raise substantial doubt about our ability to continue as a going concern during the next 12 months. The accompanying financial statements have been prepared in accordance with accounting principles generally accepted in the United States of America on a going concern basis, which contemplates the realization of assets and the satisfaction of liabilities in the normal course of business. Accordingly, the financial statements do not include any adjustments relating to the recoverability of assets and classification of liabilities that might be necessary should we be unable to continue as a going concern. The financial statements included herein also include a going concern footnote.
We need additional capital to, among other things, support and restart our operations, re-hire or hire employees and engage contractors and pay our expenses. Such capital may not be available on commercially acceptable terms, if at all. If we do not receive the additional capital, we may be forced to curtail or abandon our plans to recommence our operations and we may need to permanently cease our operations.
We need to raise capital to, among other things, support and restart our operations, re-hire or hire employees, engage contractors and pay our expenses. The most likely source of future funds presently available to us will be through future borrowings under one or more loan agreements or through the sale of equity or debt. We may have difficulty obtaining additional funding, and we may have to accept terms that would adversely affect our stockholders. For example, the terms of any future financings, similar to the UCIL Loan Agreement, may impose restrictions on the manner in which we conduct our business, including our ability to pay dividends. Additionally, lending institutions or private investors may impose restrictions on a future decision by us to make capital expenditures, acquisitions or significant asset sales. Obtaining additional financing involves certain risks, including:
● | additional equity or debt financing may not be available to us on satisfactory terms, if at all; |
● | if we raise additional funds by issuing equity, equity-linked securities or debt securities, those securities may have rights, preferences or privileges senior to the rights of our currently issued and outstanding equity or debt, and our existing stockholders may experience dilution; |
● | loans or other debt instruments may have terms or conditions, such as interest rate, restrictive covenants and control or revocation provisions, which are not acceptable to management or our Board; |
● | we may not have sufficient funds to repay our debt, which could lead us to default on our obligations; and |
● | the current environment in capital markets combined with our capital constraints may prevent us from being able to obtain adequate debt financing. |
If funds advanced under our current loan agreements are inadequate to meet our needs, or we are unable to raise additional funds, we may not be able to raise enough capital to recommence our operations and operate our business. Consequently, we may be forced to curtail or even abandon our plan to recommence our operations and we may need to permanently cease our operations.
Further, the operating relationship between the Company and some of its partners, such as the minority owners of Aganar and JuegaLotto, may be negatively impacted by the Company’s lack of liquidity. If these relationships were to become strained or be terminated entirely, it could have a material adverse effect on our reputation, business, financial condition, including our ability to raise new capital, cash flows and results of operations.
If we fail to implement and maintain an effective system of internal controls, we may be unable to accurately report our results of operations, meet our reporting obligations or prevent fraud, and, as a result, investor confidence and the trading price of our common stock and warrants may be materially and adversely affected.
In connection with the audit of our consolidated financial statements as of and for the year ended December 31, 2021, we and our independent registered public accounting firm identified certain material weaknesses in our internal control over financial reporting as of December 31, 2021. Such material weaknesses have not been fully remediated as of December 31, 2023. As defined in the standards established by the U.S. Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, or PCAOB, a “material weakness” is a deficiency, or combination of deficiencies, in internal control over financial reporting, such that there is a reasonable possibility that a material misstatement of the annual or interim financial statements will not be prevented or detected on a timely basis.
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The material weaknesses as of December 31, 2022 and 2021 identified include:
● | Lack of sufficient number of personnel with an appropriate level of knowledge and experience in accounting for complex or non-routine transactions; |
● | The fact that our policies and procedures with respect to the review, supervision and monitoring of our accounting and reporting functions were either not designed and in place or not operating effectively; |
● | Deficiencies in the design and operations of the procedures relating to the timely closing of financial books at the quarter and fiscal year end; and |
● | Incomplete segregation of duties in certain types of transactions and processes. |
As a result of the material weaknesses, management has concluded that our internal control over financial reporting was ineffective as of December 31, 2022 and 2021, and that some of these deficiencies remain uncorrected as of December 31, 2023.
We intend to implement measures to remediate the identified material weaknesses. Despite these efforts, no assurance can be provided that such remedial measures will be successful in fully resolving the deficiencies in our internal controls, including those identified by the Internal Investigation, will insulate us from the consequences of past disclosure inaccuracies, or will be successful in preventing inaccurate disclosures in the future. The Company also cannot predict whether, or to what extent, such remedial actions will impact its operations or financial results.
Further, there can be no guarantee that the Internal Investigation and subsequent inquiries revealed all instances of inaccurate disclosure or other deficiencies, or that other existing or past inaccuracies or deficiencies will not be revealed in the future. Our failure to correct these deficiencies or our failure to discover and address any other deficiencies could result in inaccuracies in our financial statements and could also impair our ability to comply with applicable financial reporting requirements and related regulatory filings on a timely basis. As a result, our business, financial condition, results of operations and prospects, as well as the trading price of our shares of common stock and warrants, may be materially adversely affected.
In addition, these deficiencies could cause investors to lose confidence in our reported financial information, limiting our access to capital markets, adversely affecting our operating results and leading to declines in the trading price of our shares of common stock and warrants. Additionally, ineffective internal controls could expose us to increased risks of fraud or misappropriation of corporate assets and subject us to further litigation or regulatory investigations and civil or criminal sanctions. We could also be required to further restate our historical financial statements.
As a public company, we are subject to the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002. Section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, or Section 404, requires that we include a report from management on the effectiveness of our internal control over financial reporting in our Annual Reports on Form 10-K and Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q. In addition, once we become an “accelerated filer” and cease to be a “smaller reporting company” as such terms are defined in the JOBS Act, our independent registered public accounting firm must attest to and report on the effectiveness of our internal control over financial reporting. Moreover, even if our management concludes that our internal control over financial reporting is effective, our independent registered public accounting firm, after conducting its own independent testing, may issue an adverse opinion on the effectiveness of internal control over financial reporting because of the existence of a material weakness if it is not satisfied with our internal controls or the level at which our controls are documented, designed, operated or reviewed, or if it interprets the relevant requirements differently from us. In addition, as a public company, our reporting obligations may place a significant strain on our management, operational and financial resources and systems for the foreseeable future. We may be unable to timely complete our evaluation, testing, and any required remediation.
During the course of documenting and testing our internal control procedures, in order to satisfy the requirements of Section 404, we may identify other weaknesses and deficiencies in our internal control over financial reporting. If we fail to maintain the adequacy of our internal control over financial reporting, as these standards are modified, supplemented or amended from time to time, we may not be able to conclude on an ongoing basis that we have effective internal control over financial reporting in accordance with Section 404. Generally speaking, if we fail to achieve and maintain an effective internal control environment, it could result in future material misstatements in our financial statements and could also impair our ability to comply with applicable financial reporting requirements and related regulatory filings on a timely basis. As a result, our business, financial condition, results of operations and prospects, as well as the trading price of our shares of common stock and warrants, may be materially and adversely affected.
The circumstances that led to the failure to file our annual report and quarterly reports on time, and our efforts to investigate, assess and remediate those matters have caused and may continue to cause substantial delays in our SEC filings.
Our ability to resume a timely filing schedule with respect to our SEC reporting is subject to a number of contingencies, including whether and how quickly we are able to effectively remediate the identified material weaknesses in our internal control over financial reporting. Our filing of our quarterly reports and annual reports has been delayed and we cannot assure you we will be able to timely make our future filings.
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In cases where we delay our filings, investors will need to evaluate certain decisions with respect to our shares of common stock and warrants in light of our lack of current financial information. Accordingly, any investment in our shares or warrants may involve a greater degree of risk than other companies who are current on their public filings. Our lack of current public information may have an adverse impact on investor confidence, which could lead to a reduction in our stock price or restrictions on our abilities to obtain financing in the public market, among others.
Business, Market & Economic Risks
Competition within the global entertainment and gaming industries is intense and if we fail to compete effectively, our users may be attracted to our competitors or to competing forms of entertainment including those on mobile devices and web applications, such as streaming, online gaming, esports, and online sports betting. If our offerings are not popular, we could experience price reductions, reduced margins, loss of market share, and our business, financial condition, and results of operations could be harmed.
Our users have a vast array of entertainment choices, including television, movies, sporting events, in-person lottery gaming, real money gaming, and sports betting, all of which are more established and may be perceived by our users to offer greater variety, affordability, interactivity, and enjoyment than our offerings. We compete with these and other forms of entertainment for our users’ discretionary time and income. If we are unable to sustain sufficient interest in our product offerings in comparison to other forms of entertainment, including new and emerging forms of entertainment available on mobile devices and web applications, such as streaming, online gaming, esports, and online sports betting, our business model may not continue to be viable.
In addition, the specific industries in which we have historically operated are characterized by dynamic consumer demand and technological advances, and there is intense competition amongst providers to the lottery, online gaming, sports betting, and promotions industries. Specifically, a number of established, well-financed third-party lottery application companies, online gaming providers, sports betting, and interactive entertainment companies have competed with our offerings, and other well-capitalized companies may introduce competitive services that achieve greater market acceptance. Such competitors may spend more money and time on developing and testing products, services, and systems, undertake more extensive marketing campaigns, adopt more aggressive pricing or promotional policies, or otherwise develop more commercially successful products, services, or systems than we are able, which could negatively impact our business. Furthermore, new competitors may enter the mobile lottery industry, and government lottery operators may introduce forms of online lottery gaming that compete with our services. There has also been, and continues to be, considerable consolidation among competitors in the entertainment, gaming, and lottery industries, and such consolidation, and future consolidation, could result in the formation of larger competitors with increased financial resources and altered cost structures, which may enable them to offer more competitive products, gain a larger market share, expand offerings, and broaden their geographic scope of operations. If we are not able to achieve some market share, if our offerings are not popular, or if we are not able to provide competitive products, our business, financial condition, and results of operations could be harmed.
Economic downturns, inflation, and political and market conditions beyond our control could adversely affect our business, financial condition, and results of operations.
Our financial performance is subject to U.S. and global economic conditions and their impact on levels of spending by potential users and customers of our Platform and acquirers of our Data Service. Economic recessions, or other economic conditions such as rising inflation and interest rates, have had, and may continue to have, far reaching adverse consequences across many industries, including the global entertainment, lottery, sweepstakes and promotions, and gaming industries, which may adversely affect our business, financial condition, and results of operations. Tepid growth was experienced in the U.S. and globally following the financial crisis in 2008 through 2009, and there may be an increasing risk of a recession or inflationary economic impacts due to international trade and monetary policy, rising interest rates and inflation, and acts or threats of acts of war (including the ongoing war in the Ukraine and Middle East), along with other economic challenges. If the national and international economic recovery slows or stalls, these economies experience another recession, or any of the relevant regional or local economies suffers a downturn, or if inflationary effects accelerate, we may experience a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition, or results of operations.
In addition, changes in general market, economic, and political conditions in domestic and foreign economies or financial markets, including those resulting from, for example: the ongoing effects of the COVID-19 pandemic; rising interest rates and inflation; geopolitical challenges, including global security concerns in response to Russia’s continued war in Ukraine and regional wars in the Middle East; financial and credit market instability or the unavailability of credit; and fluctuation in stock markets, may reduce users’, customers’, or subscribers’ disposable income and corporate budgets. Any one of these changes could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition, or results of operations and could cause the value of our securities to decline or become worthless.
Competition in the sports media market could impair our ability to generate revenue from Sports.com
The landscape of the sports content industry is changing as traditional media companies are putting on a focus on developing original sports content. In recent years, Apple, Netflix, Warner Brothers Discovery, and Amazon have produced original sports content and entered into agreements to broadcast live sporting events. Their entry into the market could limit our ability to acquire streaming rights for live sports events. Costs to produce original content may increase to the point where we cannot compete in the sector.
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Consumer trends in paying for streaming content may have an adverse impact on the Sports.com subscription service.
The global video streaming market is expected to experience a compound annual growth rate of 17.8% over the next eight years, reaching a value of $2.4 trillion by 2032. With more than 200 global streaming services, consumers are presented with a wide array of choices where to spend their discretionary entertainment dollars. Since 2022, 25% of streaming subscribers have cancelled three or more services. Additionally, 21% of subscribers intend to cancel at least one additional in 2024. This trend may negatively impact our ability to attract new customers or may increase the costs of both customer acquisition and retention.
Reductions in discretionary consumer spending could have an adverse effect on our business, financial condition, and results of operations.
Our business is particularly sensitive to reductions from time to time in discretionary consumer spending. Demand for entertainment and leisure activities, including lottery play, can be affected by changes in the economy and consumer tastes, both of which are difficult to predict and beyond our control. Unfavorable changes in general economic conditions, including recessions, economic slowdowns, sustained high levels of unemployment, and rising prices and inflation, or the perception by consumers of weak or weakening economic conditions, may reduce our users’ disposable income or result in fewer individuals engaging in entertainment and leisure activities, such as purchasing lottery games through remote channels. Several factors relating to this economic downturn, including reductions in discretionary income due to changes in employment conditions, as well as customer preferences regarding discretionary spending habits, have caused and will likely continue to cause a reduction in consumer spending. As a result, fewer individuals may engage in gaming and lottery activities. The effect of a decrease in consumer spending on entertainment and leisure activities due to unfavorable market conditions could reduce the Company’s cash flows and revenues, and therefore have a material and adverse impact on our results of operations. As a result, we cannot ensure that demand for our offerings will remain constant or achieve our anticipated growth.
Adverse developments affecting economies throughout the world, including a general tightening of availability of credit, decreased liquidity in certain financial markets, increased interest rates and inflation, foreign exchange fluctuations, increased energy costs, acts or perceived threats of war or terrorism, transportation disruptions, natural disasters, declining consumer confidence, sustained high levels of unemployment, or significant declines in stock markets, natural disasters, as well as concerns regarding pandemics, epidemics, and the spread of contagious diseases, could lead to a further reduction in discretionary spending on entertainment and leisure activities, such as lottery play and participation in sweepstakes. Any significant or prolonged decrease in consumer spending on entertainment or leisure activities could adversely affect the demand for our offerings, reducing our cash flows and revenues, thereby materially harming our business, financial condition, and results of operations and could cause the value of our securities to decline or become worthless.
Negative events or negative media coverage relating to, or a declining popularity of, the lottery or lottery games in general, or other negative coverage relating to lottery, forms of online gaming or betting, or the gaming industry, may adversely impact our ability to retain or attract users, which could have an adverse impact on our business, financial condition, and results of operations.
Public opinion can significantly influence our business. Unfavorable publicity regarding, for example, our company, members of our management and Board, our technology, our implementation of upgrades and changes to our technology, the quality of our Platform and its interfaces, our product offerings, our other services and systems, actual or threatened litigation or regulatory activity, the actions of third parties with whom we have relationships, our ability to recommence our business operations, or the conduct of the lottery authorities and the products they offer, including declining popularity of a particular lottery game or lottery games in general, could seriously harm our reputation. In addition, a negative shift in the perception of lottery games by the public or by politicians, lobbyists, or others could affect future legislation regarding the mobile purchase of lottery games from third-party providers, including with respect to the regulation or licensure of couriers, or with respect to the legalization of online lottery game sales (“Online Lottery”), either of which may impact our operations. Negative public perception could also lead to new restrictions on or to the prohibition of mobile lottery play in jurisdictions in which we currently operate. Such negative publicity could also adversely affect the size, demographics, engagement, and loyalty of our new players and established user base, and it could result in decreased revenue or slower user growth rates, which could seriously harm our business, financial condition, and results of operations and could cause the value of our securities to decline or become worthless.
Our future growth will depend largely on our ability to attract players and retain users, and the loss of our users, failure to attract new users in a cost-effective manner, or failure to effectively manage our growth could adversely affect our business, financial condition, and results of operations.
Our ability to achieve growth in revenue in the future will depend, in large part, upon our ability to attract new players to our offerings, retain existing users of our offerings, and reactivate users in a cost-effective manner. Achieving growth in our community of users may require us to increasingly engage in sophisticated and costly sales and marketing efforts, which may not make sense in terms of return on investment. We have used and expect to continue to use a variety of free and paid marketing channels, in combination with the promotional activity of in-state and multi-state issued lottery games, to achieve our objectives. For paid marketing, we intend to leverage a broad array of advertising channels, which may include a combination of radio and social media platforms, such as Facebook, Instagram, and X (formerly Twitter), affiliate marketing, paid and organic search engines, and other digital channels, such as mobile display. If the search engines on which we rely modify their algorithms, change their terms around gaming and lottery, or if the prices at which we may purchase listings increase, then our costs could increase, and fewer users may click through to our websites or download our application. If links to our websites or application are not displayed prominently in online search results, if fewer users click through to our websites or application, if our other digital marketing campaigns are not effective, or if the costs of attracting users via any of our current methods significantly increase, then our ability to efficiently attract new users could be reduced, our revenue could decline, and our business, financial condition, and results of operations could be harmed and could cause the value of our securities to decline or become worthless.
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In addition, our ability to increase the number of users of our offerings will depend on user adoption of playing lottery games remotely via a third-party application. Growth in the mobile and online lottery industry and the level of demand for and market acceptance of our product offerings is subject to a high degree of uncertainty. We cannot ensure that players will use our products or that the industry will achieve more widespread acceptance.
Additionally, as technological or regulatory standards change and we modify our offerings to comply with those standards, we may need users to take certain actions to continue playing, such as performing age verification and location checks or accepting new terms and conditions, including those regarding responsible gaming. Users may stop using our offerings at any time, including if the quality of the user experience or our support capabilities in the event of a user concern, does not meet their expectations or keep pace with the quality of the customer experience generally offered by competitive offerings. This could seriously harm our business, financial condition and results of operations and could cause the value of our securities to decline or become worthless.
Prior to the Operational Cessation, Internet search engines drove traffic to our B2C Platform and our user growth could decline and our business, financial condition, and results of operations would be adversely affected if we fail to appear prominently in search results when we recommence operations.
Our success depends in part on our ability to attract users through unpaid Internet search results on search engines like Google, Yahoo!, and Bing. The number of users we attract to our B2C Platform from search engines is due, in large part, to how and where our website ranks in unpaid search results. These rankings can be affected by a number of factors, many of which are not under our direct control and may change frequently. For example, a search engine may change its ranking algorithms, methodologies, or design layouts. As a result, links to our web-based properties may not be prominent enough to drive traffic, and we may not know how or otherwise be in a position to influence the results. In some instances, search engine companies may change these rankings in a way that promotes their own competing products or services or the products or services of one or more of our competitors. Search engines may also adopt a more aggressive auction-pricing system for keywords that would cause us to incur higher advertising costs or reduce our market visibility to prospective players. Our websites have experienced fluctuations in search result rankings in the past, and we anticipate similar fluctuations in the future. Any reduction in the number of users directed to our B2C Platform could adversely affect our business, financial condition and results of operations and could cause the value of our securities to decline or become worthless.
We may be unable to continue to use the domain names that we use in our business or prevent third parties from acquiring and using domain names that infringe on, are similar to, or otherwise decrease the value of our brand, trademarks, or service marks.
We have registered domain names that we use in, or are related to, our business, most importantly www.lottery.com and www.sports.com. We believe our easily identifiable and definitional brands and domain names are one of our competitive strengths. If we lose the ability to use our domain names, especially www.lottery.com and www.sports.com, whether due to trademark claims, failure to renew applicable registrations, or any other cause, we may be forced to incur significant expense in order to attempt to purchase rights to the domain name in question, the failure of which would require us to market the relevant offerings under a new domain name, and we may be required to change our brand, which could cause us substantial harm and expense, and could negatively impact our business, financial condition, and results of operations. We may not be able to obtain preferred domain names outside the U.S. due to a variety of reasons. In addition, our competitors and others could attempt to capitalize on our brand recognition by using domain names similar to ours. We may be unable to prevent third parties from acquiring and using domain names that infringe on, are similar to, or otherwise decrease the value of our brand or our trademarks or service marks. Protecting, maintaining, and enforcing our rights in our domain names may require litigation, which could result in substantial costs and diversion of resources, all of which could, in turn, adversely affect our business, financial condition, and results of operations and could cause the value of our securities to decline or become worthless.
We are subject to risks related to corporate social responsibility, responsible gaming, reputation, and ethical conduct.
Many factors influence our reputation and the value of our brands, including the perception held by our users, customers, business partners, investors, regulatory authorities, key stakeholders, and the communities in which we operate, such as our social responsibility, corporate governance, and responsible gaming practices. We have faced, and will likely continue to face, increased scrutiny related to social, governance and responsible gaming activities, and our reputation and the value of our brands can be materially adversely harmed if we fail to act responsibly in a number of areas, such as diversity and inclusion, workplace conduct, responsible gaming, human rights, philanthropy, and support for local communities. Any harm to our reputation could impact employee engagement and retention, and the willingness of users, customers and partners to do business with us, which could have a materially adverse effect on our business, financial condition, and results of operations and could cause the value of our securities to decline or become worthless.
Illegal, unethical or fraudulent activities perpetrated by any of our members of management or Board, users, customers, or partners for personal gain could expose us to potential reputational damage and financial loss, which would negatively impact our business, financial condition, and results of operations and could cause the value of our securities to decline or become worthless.
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General Operational Risks
We have incurred net losses in the past with negative cash flows and suspended operations and may not be able to acheive and sustain profitability.
We have a history of incurring net losses and have significantly suspended our operations since July 2022, the Operational Cessation. We may not be able to achieve or maintain a necessary level of profitability in the future. We experienced net losses of approximately $25.5 million for the year ended December 31, 2023, and approximately $60.0 million and $53.0 million for the years ended December 31, 2022 and December 31, 2021, respectively. As of December 31, 2023, we had an accumulated deficit of approximately $235.1 million. While we have received some limited revenue since the Operational Cessation, we cannot predict when or whether we will be able to fully restart our operations or whether or not we will be able to reach profitability at any time in the future.
We also expect our operating expenses to increase in the future as we continue to invest for our future growth, which will negatively affect our results of operations if our total revenue does not increase. We cannot ensure that these investments will result in substantial increases in our total revenue or improvements in our results of operations. In addition to the anticipated costs to grow our business, we also expect to incur significant additional legal, accounting, and other expenses as a public company. Once we fully restart our operations, any failure to increase our revenue or to manage our costs could prevent us from achieving or maintaining profitability or positive cash flow.
The online lottery market is still in relatively early stages of growth, and if such market does not continue to grow, grows slower than we expect, or fails to grow as we forecast, our business, financial condition, and results of operations could be adversely affected.
The Online Lottery market has grown rapidly since we launched our Platform in 2016, but it is still relatively new, and it is uncertain to what extent market acceptance will continue to grow, if at all. Our success will depend to a substantial extent on the willingness of users to purchase Online Lottery games, i.e., through mobile applications and web properties. If the public does not perceive these services as beneficial, or chooses not to use them as a result of concerns regarding security, safety, affordability, or for other reasons, whether as a result of incidents on our Platform or on our competitors’ applications or otherwise, or instead adopts alternative solutions that may arise, then the market for our Platform may not further develop, may develop slower than we expect, or may not achieve the growth potential we expect, any of which could adversely affect our business, financial condition, and results of operations and could cause the value of our securities to decline or become worthless.
Our business may be materially adversely affected if our products, technology, services, and solutions do not achieve and maintain broad market acceptance, if we are unable to keep pace with or adapt to rapidly changing technology, evolving industry standards, and changing regulatory requirements, or if we do not invest in product and systems development and provide services that are attractive to our users and customers.
Our future business and financial success will depend on our ability to anticipate the needs of potential users and customers, to achieve and maintain broad market acceptance for our existing and future products, services, and systems, to successfully introduce new and upgraded products, services, and systems, and to successfully implement our current and future geographic expansion plans. To be successful, we must be able to quickly adapt to changes in technology, industry standards, and regulatory requirements by continually enhancing our technology, services, and solutions. Developing new services and upgrades to services, as well as integrating and coordinating current services, imposes burdens on our internal teams, including management, compliance, and product development. These processes are costly, and our efforts to develop, integrate, and enhance our products, services, and systems may not be successful. In addition, successfully launching a new or upgraded product or expanding into a new jurisdiction will put additional strains on our financial, technology and marketing resources. Expanding into new markets and investing resources towards increasing the depth of our coverage within existing markets impose additional burdens on our research, systems development, sales, marketing, and general managerial resources. If we are unable to manage our expansion efforts effectively, obtain greater market share or obtain widespread adoption of new or upgraded products, services, and systems, we may not be able to offset the expenses associated with the launch and marketing of the new or upgraded products, services, and systems, which could have a material adverse effect on our financial results. If we introduce new or expand existing offerings for our business, we may incur losses or otherwise fail to enter these markets successfully. Our expansion into these markets will place us in competitive and regulatory environments with which we are unfamiliar and involve various risks, including the need to invest significant resources and the possibility that returns on such investments will not be achieved for several years, if at all.
If we are unable to develop new or upgraded offerings or decide to combine, shift focus from, or phase out a service, then our users or customers may choose a competitive offering over ours, our revenues may decline, and our profitability may be reduced. If we incur significant costs in developing new or upgraded systems, products or services, or combining and maintaining existing systems, if we are not successful in marketing and selling these new products or upgrades, or if our users or customers fail to accept these new or combined products, then there could be a material adverse effect on our results of operations due to a decrease of our revenues. If we eliminate or phase out a product and are not able to offer and successfully market and sell an alternative product, our revenue may decrease, which could have a material adverse effect on our results of operations.
Our future success will largely depend on our ability to make continuous improvements to provide products, services, and systems that are attractive to our users and customers. As a result, we will need to continually invest resources in product development and successfully incorporate and develop new technology. If we are unable to do so or otherwise provide products, services, and systems that users and customers want, then our users or customers may become dissatisfied and use competitors’ services. If we are unable to continue offering innovative products, services, and systems, we may be unable to attract additional users or customers or retain our existing users or customers, which could harm our business, results of operations, and financial condition and could cause the value of our securities to decline or become worthless.
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Our results of operations may fluctuate due to seasonality and other factors and, therefore, our periodic operating results will not be guarantees of future performance.
Although lottery games are offered on a year-round basis, there is seasonality in lottery game purchasing that may impact our operations and operations of our customers. The broad geographical mix of our user and customer base also impacts the effect of seasonality, as users and customers in different territories typically place differing importance on different lottery games and those games often have different calendars. For example, some multi-state games can have occasional increasingly high jackpot opportunities, which increase user attention and ticket purchases, which further increases the jackpot. Such events may cause increases in our revenues. By contrast, low jackpot lottery games or periods in which there is little promotional activity connected to lottery games in general may negatively impact the purchase of lottery games. Such fluctuations and uncertainties may negatively impact our cash flows.
We may not be able to capitalize on trends and changes in the gaming and lottery industries, including due to the operational costs involved, the laws and regulations governing these industries in various jurisdictions, and other factors.
We participate in new and evolving aspects of the mobile gaming and lottery industries. Part of our strategy, when we have sufficient funding, is to take advantage of the liberalization of regulations covering these industries on a global basis. These industries involve significant risks and uncertainties, including legal, business, and financial risks. The fast-changing environment in these industries can make it difficult to plan strategically and can provide opportunities for competitors to grow their businesses at our expense. Consequently, our future results of operations, cash flows, and financial condition are difficult to predict and may not grow at the rates we expect.
To the extent that we enter into any business that is determined to be internet gaming, any jurisdiction in which our existing business is deemed to be internet gaming, or our customers offer internet gaming, it is important to recognize that the laws relating to internet gaming are evolving literally by jurisdiction. To varying degrees, governments have taken steps to change the regulation of internet wagering through the implementation of new or revised licensing and taxation regimes, including the possible imposition of sanctions on unlicensed providers. We cannot predict the timing, scope or terms of the implementation or revision of any such state, federal or foreign laws or regulations, or the extent to which any such laws and regulations may facilitate or hinder our strategy or be applicable to or impactful on our business, operations and financial condition.
In jurisdictions that authorize internet gaming, we may not be successful in offering our technology, content and services to internet gaming operators, We expect to face intense competition from our traditional competitors in the gaming and lottery industries, as well as a number of other domestic and foreign competitors (and, in some cases, the operators themselves), many of which have substantially greater financial resources or experience in this area than we do.
Know-your-customer and geo-location programs and technologies supplied to us by third parties are an important aspect of certain internet and mobile gaming products, services, and systems, because they can confirm certain information with respect to players and prospective players, such as age, identity, and location. Payment processing programs and technologies, typically provided by third parties, are also a necessary feature of interactive and mobile wagering products, services, and systems. Moreover, we cannot provide any assurance that programs or technologies supplied to us by third parties will always meet regulatory standards, which constitutes an economic and regulatory risk to us. Additionally, these programs and technologies are costly to implement, and our use of them may have an adverse impact on our results of operations, cash flows, and our financial condition and overall business risk. Also, our products or services containing these programs and technologies may not be available to us on commercially reasonable terms, if at all, and may not perform accurately or otherwise in accordance with required specifications, all of which may have a negative impact on our business, results of operations, and financial condition and could cause the value of our securities to decline or become worthless.
Branding and Reputational Risks
Our business depends on a strong brand, and if we are not able to develop, maintain and enhance our brand and reputation, including as a result of negative publicity, our business and operating results may be harmed.
We believe that developing, maintaining and enhancing our brand and reputation is critical to achieving widespread acceptance of our products, services, and systems, attracting and retaining users and customers, persuading users and customers to adopt additional products, services, and systems, and hiring and retaining our employees.
We believe that the importance of our brand will increase as competition in the markets in which we participate further intensifies. Successful promotion of our brand will depend on a number of factors, including the effectiveness of our marketing efforts, our ability to provide high-quality, reliable, and cost-effective products, services, and systems, the perceived value of our products, services, and systems, and our ability to provide quality user and customer success and support experience. Brand promotion activities require us to make substantial expenditures. The promotion of our brand, however, may not generate user and customer awareness or increase revenue to the extent we anticipate, or at all, and any increase in revenue may not offset the expenses we incur in building and maintaining our brand.
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Additionally, the reputational impact of our Board and management changes, the Operational Cessation and the events contributing thereto have not been quantified. It may require significant investment to restore the value in our brand, and the value of our brand may never return to prior levels or may be permanently reduced as a result of recent events.
We, our employees, our affiliates, and others with whom we have contractual relationships also use social media to communicate externally. There is a risk that this use of social media to communicate about our business may give rise to liability or result in public exposure of personal information of our employees, our users, or others, each of which could affect our revenue, business, results of operations, and financial condition.
We operate in a public-facing industry where negative publicity, whether or not justified, can spread rapidly through, among other things, social media. To the extent that we are unable to respond timely and appropriately to negative publicity, our reputation and brand could be harmed. Moreover, even if we are able to respond in a timely and appropriate manner, we cannot be certain that it will be timely or sufficient to not cause us to suffer reputational and brand damage, which could affect our revenue, business, results of operations, and financial condition.
Our marketing efforts to help grow our business may not be effective.
Promoting awareness of our Platform is important to our ability to grow our business and to attract new users and customers in the future, which can be costly. We believe that much of the growth in the number of users of our B2C Platform prior to the Operational Cessation was attributable to our paid marketing initiatives. Our future marketing efforts may include a combination of bonus offerings, affiliate marketing programs, social media engagement, radio, video, podcasts, search engine optimization, and keyword search campaigns. Our marketing initiatives may become increasingly expensive and generating a meaningful return on these initiatives may become difficult. Even if we successfully increase revenue as a result of these marketing efforts, it may not offset the additional marketing expenses we incur. If our marketing efforts intended to help grow our business are not effective, we expect that our business, financial condition, and results of operations would be adversely affected.
If we fail to detect fraud or misappropriation of proprietary information, including by our users, customers, and employees and contractors, our reputation and brand may suffer, which could negatively impact our business, financial condition, and results of operations and can subject us to investigations and litigation.
We have in the past incurred, and may in the future, incur losses from various types of fraud, which may include the use of stolen or fraudulent payment card data, claims of unauthorized payments by a user and attempted payments by users with insufficient funds, referral fraud by affiliates, fraud with respect to background checks, fraud by employees or contractors, including our couriers, and account misappropriation by bad actors, or phishing. Bad actors use increasingly sophisticated methods to engage in illegal activities involving personal information, such as identity theft, payment or bank account information theft and the unauthorized acquisition of mobile phone numbers and other accounts.
Acts of fraud may involve various tactics, including collusion. Successful exploitation of our technology could have negative effects on our product offerings, services, and user experience and could harm our reputation. Failure to discover such acts or schemes in a timely manner could result in harm to our operations. In addition, negative publicity related to such schemes could have an adverse effect on our brand and reputation, potentially causing a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition, and results of operations and could cause the value of our securities to decline or become worthless. In the event of the occurrence of any such issues with our existing technology or product offerings, substantial engineering and marketing and other resources, and management attention, may be diverted from other projects and requirements to correct these issues, which may delay other projects and the achievement of our strategic objectives.
In addition, any misappropriation of, or access to, users’ or other proprietary information or other breach of our information security could result in legal claims or legal proceedings, including regulatory investigations and actions, or liability for failure to comply with privacy and information security laws, including for failure to protect personal information or for misusing personal information, which could disrupt our operations, force us to modify our business practices, require us to comply with costly remediation requirements, damage our brand and reputation, and expose us to claims from our users, regulators, employees, and other parties, any of which could have an adverse effect on our business, financial condition, and results of operations.
We may be held liable for these acts of fraud. For example, under current payment card industry practices, we may be liable for use of funds on our products with fraudulent payment card data, even if the associated financial institution approved the transaction. Despite measures we have taken to detect and reduce the occurrence of fraudulent or other malicious activity on our offerings, we cannot guarantee that any of our measures will be effective or will scale efficiently with our business. Our failure to adequately detect or prevent fraudulent transactions could harm our reputation or brand, result in litigation or regulatory action that may include fines and penalties, and lead to expenses, all of which could adversely affect our business, financial condition, and results of operations and could cause the value of our securities to decline or become worthless.
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Our growth prospects may suffer if we are unable to develop successful offerings or if we fail to pursue additional offerings. In addition, if we fail to make the right investment decisions in our offerings and technology, we may not attract and retain key users and customers and our revenue, business, financial condition, and results of operations may decline.
The industry in which we operate is subject to rapid and frequent changes in standards, technologies, products, and service offerings, as well as in consumer demands and expectations and regulations. We must continuously make decisions regarding which offerings and technology we should invest in to meet user and consumer demand in compliance with evolving industry standards and regulatory requirements, and to grow we must continually introduce and successfully market new and innovative technologies, offerings, and enhancements to remain competitive and effectively stimulate user and customer demand, acceptance, and engagement. Our ability to engage, retain, and increase our user and customer base and to increase our revenue will depend heavily on our ability to successfully create new offerings, both independently and together with third parties. We may introduce significant changes to our existing technology and offerings or develop and introduce new and unproven products, services, and systems, any of which we may have little or no prior development or operating experience. The process of developing new offerings and systems is inherently complex and uncertain, and new offerings may not be well received by users, even if well-reviewed and of high quality. If we are unable to develop technology and products, services, and systems that address users’ needs or enhance and improve our existing technology and offerings in a timely manner, it could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition, and results of operations and could cause the value of our securities to decline or become worthless.
Although we intend to continue investing in our research and development efforts to the extent we have sufficient funds to do so, if our new or enhanced offerings fail to engage our users or customers, we may fail to attract or retain users or customers or to generate sufficient revenue, operating margin, or other value to justify our investments, any of which may seriously harm our business. In addition, management may not properly ascertain or assess the risks of new initiatives, and subsequent events may alter the risks that were evaluated at the time we decided to execute any new initiative. Creating additional offerings can also divert our management’s attention from other business issues and opportunities. Even if our new offerings attain market acceptance, those new offerings could exploit the market share of our other product offerings or share of our users’ wallets in a manner that could negatively impact such offerings. Furthermore, such offering expansion will increase the complexity of our business and place an additional burden on our management, operations, technical systems, and financial resources, and we may not recover the often-substantial up-front costs of developing and marketing new offerings or recover the opportunity cost of diverting management and financial resources away from other offerings. In the event of continued growth of our operations, products, or in the number of third-party relationships, we may not have adequate resources, financially, operationally, technologically, or otherwise, to support such growth and the quality of our technology, offerings, or our relationships with third parties could suffer. In addition, failure to effectively identify, pursue, and execute new business initiatives, or to efficiently adapt our processes and infrastructure to meet the needs of our innovations, may adversely affect our business, financial condition, and results of operations and could cause the value of our securities to decline or become worthless. Any new offerings may also require our users to utilize new skills to use our offerings. This could create a lag in adoption of new offerings and new user additions related to any new offerings. To the extent that future users, including those in older demographics, are less willing to invest the time to learn to use our products, and if we are unable to make our products, services, and systems easier to learn to use, our user growth or engagement could be affected, and our business could be harmed. We may develop new products, services and systems that increase user engagement and costs without increasing revenue.
Additionally, we may make bad or unprofitable decisions regarding these investments. If competitors offer more attractive offerings, we may lose users or users may decrease their spending on our offerings. Changing player demands, superior competitive offerings, evolving industry standards, or changes in the regulatory environment could render our existing offerings unattractive, unmarketable, or obsolete and require us to make substantial unanticipated changes to our technology or business model. Our failure to adapt to a rapidly changing market or evolving user and customer demands could harm our business, financial condition, and results of operations and could cause the value of our securities to decline or become worthless.
Any failure to offer high-quality user support may harm our relationships with users and could adversely affect our reputation, brand, business, financial condition, and results of operations.
Our ability to attract and retain qualified support personnel is dependent in part on the ease and reliability of our offerings, including our ability to provide high-quality support. Users on our Platform have and will continue to depend on our support organization to resolve any issues relating to our offerings, such as technical questions around how to use our app and web-based properties or information regarding our Data Services. Our ability to provide effective and timely support when operations resume will be largely dependent on our ability to attract and retain service providers who are qualified to support users and sufficiently knowledgeable regarding our offerings. As we restart our business and reintroduce and improve our offerings, we will face challenges related to providing quality support services at scale. As users in new domestic and international jurisdictions acquire our services, our support organization will face additional challenges, including those associated with delivering support in languages other than English. The complex employment market and low unemployment rates may impact the availability of service providers and as a result, our ability to provide effective and timely support and an increase in response time. Any failure to provide efficient user support, or a market perception that we do not maintain high-quality support, could adversely affect our reputation, brand, business, financial condition, and results of operations and could cause the value of our securities to decline or become worthless.
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Information Technology Risks
We rely on information technology and other systems and services, and any failures, errors, defects, or disruptions in our systems or the availability of our services could diminish our brand and reputation, subject us to liability, disrupt our business, affect our ability to scale our technical infrastructure, and adversely affect our operating results and growth prospects. Our software applications and systems, and the third-party platforms upon which they are made available, could contain undetected errors.
Our technology infrastructure is critical to the performance of our offerings and to user and customer satisfaction. We have devoted and expect to continue to devote significant resources to network and data security to protect our systems and data and aim to make our operations and our solutions more streamlined, automated, and cost-effective. Despite our expenditures, our systems may not be adequately designed with the necessary reliability and redundancy to avoid performance delays or outages that could be harmful to our business. The measures we take may not be sufficient to prevent or hinder cyber-attacks and protect our systems, data, and user and customer information and to prevent outages, data, or information loss, fraud, and to prevent or detect security breaches, including a disaster recovery strategy for server and equipment failure and back-office systems and the use of third parties for certain cybersecurity services. We have experienced, and we may in the future experience, website disruptions, outages and other performance problems due to a variety of factors, including infrastructure changes, human or software errors and capacity constraints. Such disruptions have not had a material impact on us; however, future disruptions from unauthorized access to, fraudulent manipulation of, or tampering with our computer systems and technological infrastructure, or those of third parties, could result in a wide range of negative outcomes, each of which could materially adversely affect our business, financial condition, results of operations and prospects.
Additionally, our application and web-based products may contain errors, bugs, flaws, or corrupted data, and these defects may only become apparent after their launch. If a particular product offering is unavailable when users or customers attempt to access it or navigation through our offerings is slower than they expect, users may be unable to timely acquire their lottery games and may be less likely to use our Platform again, if at all. Furthermore, programming errors, defects, and data corruption could disrupt our operations, adversely affect the experience of our users or customers, harm our reputation, cause our users to stop utilizing our offerings, divert our resources, and delay market acceptance of our offerings, any of which could result in liability to us or harm our business, financial condition, and results of operations and could cause the value of our securities to decline or become worthless.
If our user and customer base and engagement grows, and the amount and types of offerings we provide grow and evolve, we will need an increasing amount of technical infrastructure, including network capacity and computing power, to satisfy our users’ and customers’ needs. Such infrastructure expansion may be complex, and unanticipated delays in completing these projects or availability of components may lead to increased project costs, operational inefficiencies, or interruptions in the delivery or degradation of the quality of our offerings. In addition, there may be issues related to this infrastructure that are not identified during the testing phases of design and implementation, which may only become evident after we have started to fully use the underlying equipment or software, that could further degrade the user or customer experience or increase our costs. As such, we could fail to effectively scale and grow our technical infrastructure to accommodate increased demands. In addition, our business may be subject to interruptions, delays or failures resulting from adverse weather conditions, other natural disasters, power loss, terrorism, cyber-attacks, public health emergencies, or other catastrophic events.
We believe that if our users or customers have a negative experience with our offerings, or if our brand or reputation is negatively affected, users and customers may be less inclined to utilize our products and services or to recommend our offerings to other potential users and customers. As such, a failure or significant interruption in our service could harm our reputation, business, financial condition, and operating results.
Despite our security measures, our information technology and infrastructure may be vulnerable to attacks by hackers, breached due to employee or contractor error, malfeasance, or other cybersecurity risks or disruptions. Any such breach could compromise our networks and the information stored there could be accessed, publicly disclosed, lost or stolen. Any such access, disclosure, or other loss of information could result in legal claims or proceedings, liability under laws that protect the privacy of personal information, and regulatory penalties, fines, and the payment of damages, restrictions on our ability to use data, disruption of our operations and the services we provide to users, damage to our reputation, and a loss of confidence in our products, services, and systems, which could adversely affect our business.
The secure maintenance and transmission of personally identifiable information of our users is a critical element of our operations. Our information technology and other systems that maintain and transmit user information, or those of our customers, service providers, business partners, or employees may be compromised by a malicious third-party penetration of our network security, or that of a third-party service provider or business partner or impacted by intentional or unintentional actions or inactions by our employees, or those of a third-party service provider or business partner. As a result, our users’ information may be lost, disclosed, accessed, or taken without our users’ consent. We have experienced attempts to breach our systems and other similar incidents in the past and anticipate that it may occur in the future. For example, we expect that we will be subject to attempts to gain unauthorized access to or through our information systems, whether by our employees or third parties, including cyber-attacks by computer programmers and hackers who may develop and deploy viruses, worms or other malicious software programs. To date, attempts to breach our systems have not had a material impact on our business, operations, or financial results, but we cannot provide assurance that they will not have a material impact in the future.
We rely on encryption and authentication technology licensed from third parties in an effort to securely transmit confidential and sensitive information, including payment card information. Advances in computer capabilities, new technological discoveries, or other developments may result in the whole or partial failure of this technology to protect transaction data or other confidential and sensitive information from being breached or compromised. In addition, apps and websites are often attacked through compromised credentials, including those obtained through phishing and credential stuffing. Our security measures, and those of our third-party service providers, may not detect or prevent all attempts to breach our systems, denial-of-service attacks, viruses, malicious software, break-ins, phishing attacks, social engineering, security breaches, or other attacks and similar disruptions that may jeopardize the security of information stored in or transmitted by our apps, websites, networks, and systems or that we or such third parties otherwise maintain, including payment card systems, which may subject us to fines or higher transaction fees or limit or terminate our access to certain payment methods. We and such third parties may not anticipate or prevent all types of attacks until after they have already been launched. Further, techniques used to obtain unauthorized access to or sabotage systems change frequently and may not be known until launched against us or our third-party service providers.
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In addition, distributed ledger technology is an emerging technology that offers new capabilities that are not fully proven in use. As with other novel software products, the computer code underpinning the distributed ledger technology used in our Platform may contain errors, or function in unexpected ways and may cause the software to break or function incorrectly.
Furthermore, security breaches can also occur as a result of non-technical issues, including intentional or inadvertent breaches by our employees or by third parties. These risks may increase over time as the complexity and number of technical systems and applications we use also increases. Breaches of our security measures or those of our third-party service providers or cybersecurity incidents could result in unauthorized access to our sites, networks, and systems; unauthorized access to and misappropriation of user information, including users’ personally identifiable information, or other confidential or proprietary information of ourselves or third parties; viruses, worms, spyware, or other malware being served from our sites, networks, or systems; deletion or modification of content or the display of unauthorized content on our sites; interruption, disruption, or malfunction of operations; costs relating to breach remediation, deployment of additional personnel and protection technologies, response to governmental investigations, and media inquiries and coverage; engagement of third-party experts and consultants; or litigation, regulatory action, and other potential liabilities. In the past, we have experienced social engineering, phishing, malware, and similar attacks and threats of denial-of-service attacks, none of which to date has been material to our business; however, such attacks could in the future have a material adverse effect on our operations, business, and financial condition. If any of these breaches of security should occur and be material, our reputation and brand could be damaged, our business may suffer, we could be required to expend significant capital and other resources to alleviate problems caused by such breaches, and we could be exposed to a risk of loss, litigation, or regulatory action and possible liability. We cannot guarantee that recovery protocols and backup systems will be sufficient to prevent data loss. Actual or anticipated attacks may cause us to incur increasing costs, including costs to deploy additional personnel and protection technologies, train employees, and engage third-party experts and consultants.
In addition, any party who is able to illicitly obtain access to a user’s account could access the user’s transaction data or personal information, resulting in the perception that our systems are insecure. Any compromise or breach of our security measures, or those of our third-party service providers, could violate applicable privacy, data protection, data security, network, and information systems security and other laws and cause significant legal and financial exposure, adverse publicity, negative impact to our brand and reputation, and a loss of confidence in our security measures, which could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition, and results of operations and could cause the value of our securities to decline or become worthless. We plan to continue to devote significant resources to protect against security breaches or we may need to in the future to address problems caused by breaches, including notifying affected users in accordance with regulatory requirements and responding to any resulting litigation, which in turn, may divert resources from the growth and expansion of our business.
Because we maintain certain information about our users, we are subject to various privacy laws both in the U.S. and internationally. Our failure to comply with such laws could expose us to penalties, fines, and litigation, and it could adversely impact our reputation and brand, any of which could adversely affect our business.
We are subject to various privacy laws in the U.S. and foreign jurisdictions and we expect that new industry standards, laws and regulations will continue to be proposed regarding privacy, data protection and information security in many jurisdictions, including the California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018, which went effective January 1, 2020 and the California Consumer Privacy Rights Act (“CCPA”), which went effective on January 1, 2023, which impose obligations for the handling, disclosure and deletion of personal information for California residents. Virginia and other states have enacted, or are considering enacting, data privacy laws similar to the CCPA. Certain of these laws, including the CCPA also requires companies to give residents the ability to opt out of the sale of their personal information and creates potential liability for companies that fail to take adequate steps to protect personal information where that failure results in a data breach.
In the European Union, the General Data Protection Regulation of 2018 (the “GDPR”) significantly expanded the rules on using personal data and increased the risks of processing personal data. Some of the new requirements include:
● | accountability and transparency requirements, which require those who control data to demonstrate and record compliance and provide certain detailed information to users regarding the ways in which data is used and processed; |
● | enhanced data consent requirements, which includes “explicit” consent with regard to information the regulation classifies as sensitive data; |
● | obligations to consider data privacy as new products, services and systems are developed, including ways to limit accessibility of data as well as the amount of information collected, processed, and stored; |
● | constraints on using data to profile users; |
● | obligations to provide users with personal data in a usable format on request and to erase personal data in certain circumstances; and |
● | reporting to data protection authorities of potential breaches without undue delay (72 hours, where feasible). |
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Other foreign jurisdictions in which the Company operates, or in which it has it services available, have implemented, or are considering implementing, data privacy laws and regulations, many of which are similar to the GDPR. Although we attempt to stay current with such developments in the jurisdictions in which we or our subsidiaries operate, our policies and procedures for compliance with data privacy laws and regulations, may not be up-to-date or implemented correctly or our management, employees or agents. thereby not complying with current procedures. Moreover, our third-party agents in foreign jurisdictions may likewise not implement policies and procedures that are the most current for their jurisdiction, thereby creating a risk factor for us. Failure to comply with data privacy laws and regulations may have serious financial consequences. We could face significant sanctions, statutory damages, and damage to our reputation resulting in a material adverse effect on our results of operations, business, or financial condition.
Our business could be adversely impacted by changes in the Internet and mobile device accessibility of users.
Our business depends on users’ access to our offerings via a mobile device or personal computer and the Internet. We may operate in jurisdictions that provide limited data or Internet connectivity, particularly as we expand into foreign markets. Internet access and access to a mobile device or personal computer are frequently provided by companies with significant market power that could take actions that degrade, disrupt, or increase the cost of consumers’ ability to access our offerings. In addition, the Internet infrastructure that we and our users rely on in any particular geographic area may be unable to support the demands placed upon it and could interfere with the speed and availability of our offerings. Any such failure in Internet or mobile device or computer accessibility, even for a short period of time, could adversely affect our results of business, financial condition, and results of operations and could cause the value of our securities to decline or become worthless.
We operate in a rapidly evolving industry and if we fail to successfully develop, market, or sell new products or adopt new technology platforms, it could materially adversely affect our business, results of operations, and financial condition.
Our Platform and other software products are in a market characterized by rapid technological advances, evolving standards in software and hardware technology, and frequent new product introductions and enhancements that may render existing products, services, and systems obsolete. Competitors are continuously upgrading their product offerings with new features, functions, and content. In addition, we may be required to refine our software and technology platform to address regulatory changes in the markets in which we operate or plan to operate. In order to remain competitive, we may need to periodically modify and enhance our technology platform and service offerings.
We cannot assure you that we will be able to respond to rapid technological or regulatory changes in our industry. In addition, the introduction of new products or updated versions of existing products and the underlying technology that supports such products has inherent risks, including, but not limited to, risks concerning:
● | product quality, including the possibility of software defects, which could result in claims against us or the inability to sell our products; |
● | the accuracy of our estimates of user or customer demand, and the fit of the new products and features with users’ or customers’ needs; |
● | the need to educate our sales, marketing and services personnel to work with the new products and features, which may strain our resources and lengthen sales cycles; |
● | market acceptance of initial product releases; and |
● | competitor product introductions or regulatory changes that render our new products obsolete. |
Developing, enhancing and localizing software is expensive, and the investment in product development may involve a long payback cycle. However, we believe that we must dedicate a significant number of resources to our developmental efforts to maintain our competitive position. However, funding for such development efforts may not be available on favorable terms if at all, and we may not receive significant revenue from these investments for several years, if at all. In addition, as we or our competitors introduce new or enhanced offerings, the demand for our offerings, may decline.
We may not timely and effectively scale and adapt our technology and network infrastructure to ensure that our Platform is accessible, which would adversely affect our business, reputation, financial condition, and results of operations.
Once we completely resume operations, we expect to make significant investments to improve the availability of our Platform and to enable rapid releases of new features and services, funding permitting. However, it may become increasingly difficult to maintain and improve the availability of our Platform, especially during peak usage times and as our Platform becomes more complex and if our user and customer traffic increase. If our Platform is unavailable when users and customers attempt to access it or it does not respond as quickly as they expect or it experiences capacity constraints due to an overwhelming number of users or customers accessing our Platform simultaneously, users or customers may seek other offerings, and may not return to our Platform as often in the future, or at all. This would adversely affect our ability to attract users and customers and decrease the frequency with which they use our Platform. To the extent that we do not effectively address capacity constraints, upgrade our systems as needed, or develop our technology and network architecture to accommodate actual and anticipated changes in technology, our business, reputation, financial condition, and results of operations would be adversely affected.
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Our Platform may be vulnerable to risks, both foreseen and unforeseen, arising from our application of distributed ledger technology.
Prior to the Operational Cessation, our Platform utilized distributed ledger technology by preserving a cryptographic ledger of the user identification, draw identification, ticket identification, and game numbers into an immutable ledger. The distributed ledger was append-only and kept a complete record of all changes to the provided data that could not be deleted, modified, or overwritten. Distributed ledger technology is a relatively new, evolving technology. Accordingly, the further development and future viability of this technology is generally undetermined with practical and ideological challenges which may affect its further development or integration into our Platform.
Regulatory and Compliance Risks
A jurisdiction may enact, amend, or reinterpret laws and regulations governing our operations in ways that impair our revenues, cause us to incur additional legal and compliance costs and other operating expenses, or are otherwise not favorable to our existing operations or planned growth, all of which may have a material adverse effect on us or our results of operations, cash flow, or financial condition.
State and federal laws in the U.S. govern and, in some cases, limit our business practices. For example, the Interstate Wagering Amendment to 18 U.S.C. § 1301 (the “Interstate Wagering Amendment”) limits our ability to purchase lottery games for a user located in one state from a lottery authority located in another state, except under certain limited circumstances, such as where the lottery authorities in the respective states allow the sales. Therefore, for our users located within the U.S., we only purchase lottery games for users geolocated to be physically situated within the U.S. state or jurisdiction where the lottery game they are purchasing is being conducted, unless an exception were to be authorized by the applicable lottery authorities.
In addition, our business is subject to extensive regulation by multiple domestic and foreign governmental authorities and the laws and regulations governing companies conducting sweepstakes and lottery related operations on the Internet and over mobile networks and purchasing of lottery tickets on behalf of others. Such laws and regulations within U.S. and international jurisdictions are subject to change and the effect of such changes on our ongoing and potential operations cannot be predicted with certainty. Governmental authorities continually evaluate a wide range of issues that impact the mobile and online lottery and gaming industries. As a result, a jurisdiction may enact, amend, or reinterpret laws and regulations governing our operations in ways that impair our revenues, cause us to incur additional legal and compliance costs and other operating expenses, or are otherwise not favorable to our existing operations or planned growth, all of which may have a material adverse effect on us or our results of operations, cash flow, or financial condition.
There have been several proposed state and federal bills to prohibit or restrict interactive or online lottery sales, some of which have been successful. For example, in 2015, the Minnesota legislature passed an amendment to the state’s lottery law prohibiting the sale of scratch lottery tickets over the Internet. In certain jurisdictions, the sale of lottery tickets through couriers is expressly unlawful. Laws restricting the sale of lottery tickets via the Internet, through mobile networks or by courier, or that otherwise materially impact our operations, including those relating to sweepstakes, may be proposed or passed in the future at either the federal or state level or by foreign governments. For example, in 2023, the State of Texas passed Senate Bill 1820 (the “Texas Bill”), which among other things, limited online lottery gaming and the use of courier services in Texas. Any proposal or passage of such laws may reduce our revenues or require us to expend a significant amount of our funds and resources and incur additional legal and other expenses, thereby creating a material adverse effect on us or our results of operations, cash flow, or financial condition.
Changes in the executive branches of government in the U.S. as well as in foreign countries, may affect policies on lotteries and mobile gaming. For example, variations in the interpretation of The Federal Wire Act of 1961 (the “Wire Act”) by the Office of Legal Counsel (the “OLC”) of the Department of Justice (the “DOJ”) has had a material impact on the online gaming and lottery industry within the U.S. For more information, see “If there is a final determination on the applicability of the Wire Act to our operations and it is determined or codified that the Wire Act extends to transmission of lottery games in interstate or foreign commerce, certain of our operations that are not currently restricted by statute or practice to a state’s territorial boundaries may be negatively impacted or eliminated, which may have a material adverse effect on our business, financial conditions, and results of operations.” We have and may from time to time in the future retain government affairs specialists in domestic and international jurisdictions to advise elected and appointed officials regarding our perspectives on legislation and regulations related to lottery and other aspects of our business, to monitor such legislation and regulations, and to otherwise provide us with advice regarding our relations with such officials. Such efforts, however, may not be successful in whole or in part and changes in such laws or policies could have a material adverse effect on us or our results of operations, cash flow, or financial condition.
We cannot ensure that our activities or the activities of those third parties with whom we do business will not become the subject of regulatory or law enforcement proceedings. Further, lottery regulatory associations, including the Multi-State Lottery Association (the “MUSL”), and certain lottery entities both domestically and internationally exercise significant authority regarding the means and manner in which the lottery and its products are marketed and sold as well as the equipment, technology and services deployed by retailers and resellers of such lottery products. Our activities or the activities of those third parties with whom we do business may become the subject of further inquiries, investigations or enforcement proceedings by such authorities or entities. Any such proceeding by regulatory or law enforcement or associations or entities may have a material adverse effect on us or our results of operations, cash flow, or financial condition.
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If there is a final determination on the applicability of the Wire Act to our operations and it is determined or codified that the Wire Act extends to transmission of lottery games in interstate or foreign commerce, certain of our operations that are not currently restricted by statute or practice to a state’s territorial boundaries may be negatively impacted or eliminated, which may have a material adverse effect on our business, financial conditions, and results of operations.
The Wire Act of 1961 provides that anyone engaged in the business of betting or wagering that knowingly uses a wire communication facility for the transmission in interstate or foreign commerce of bets or wagers or information assisting in the placing of bets or wagers on any sporting event or contest, or for the transmission of a wire communication that entitles the recipient to receive money or credit as a result of such bets or wagers, or for information assisting in the placing of such bets or wagers, may be fined or imprisoned, or both. However, the Wire Act provides that it shall not be construed to prevent the transmission in interstate or foreign commerce of information for use in news reporting of sporting events or contests, or for the transmission of information assisting in the placing of bets or wagers on a sporting event or contest from a state or foreign country where betting on that sporting event or contest is legal.
Until 2011, there was uncertainty as to whether the Wire Act prohibited the conduct of intrastate lottery transactions via the Internet by U.S. states if such transactions crossed state lines. Essentially, there was a debate with regard to whether all of the prohibitions in the Wire Act applied only to bets or wagers on a “sporting event or contest” as used in the Wire Act, or all bets or wagers. In late 2011, the OLC issued an opinion that concluded the conduct prohibited by the Wire Act was limited to sports gambling (the “2011 DOJ Opinion”). Following the issuance of the 2011 DOJ Opinion, six state lotteries offered internet sales of scratch lottery games to in-state customers, and several other states allowed subscription sales of draw games via the Internet. Notably, in 2017, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania authorized the Pennsylvania Lottery to distribute lottery products, including scratch ticket games, through numerous channels that included web applications, mobile applications, and social media.
In January 2019, the OLC issued the 2019 Opinion, which concluded that the restrictions in the Wire Act on the transmission in interstate or foreign commerce of bets and wagers was not limited to sports gambling but applied to all bets and wagers, including those involving state lotteries. Multiple lawsuits were filed challenging the validity of the 2019 Opinion.
On June 3, 2019, the federal district court in New Hampshire determined that the Wire Act applies exclusively to sports gambling and set aside the 2019 Opinion. The New Hampshire federal district court declined, however, to issue a nationwide injunction in the case. On August 16, 2019, the DOJ appealed the New Hampshire federal district court’s decision to the First Circuit.
On January 20, 2021, the First Circuit affirmed the District Court’s decision, determining that the Wire Act applies only to interstate wire communications related to sporting events or contests. Finding that the declaratory judgment was an adequate remedy at law, the First Circuit declined to set aside the 2019 Opinion under the Administrative Procedure Act. In addition to the First Circuit’s decision, the Fifth Circuit has previously held the Wire Act prohibitions apply only to sports gambling.
On September 15, 2022, the United States District Court for the District of Rhode Island entered an order siding with the First Circuit’s interpretation of the Wire Act and holding that “the Wire Act applies only to ‘bets or wagers on any sporting event or contest.”
Notwithstanding the above, currently, there is no definitive ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court on the issue, and the courts in other U.S. Circuits might take a different position. Because many of the Company’s operations occur outside the jurisdiction of the First Circuit and the Fifth Circuit, and because the First Circuit did not set aside the 2019 Opinion, we are still monitoring the potential impact of the 2019 Opinion on our business. If courts outside the First Circuit, Fifth Circuit or the U.S. Supreme Court take a different position on the applicability of the Wire Act to our operations, the Wire Act may have a material adverse effect on our business, financial conditions, and results of operations. In particular, should it ultimately be determined or codified that the Wire Act extends to transmission of lottery games in interstate or foreign commerce, certain of our operations that are not currently restricted by statute or practice to a state’s territorial boundaries may be negatively impacted or eliminated. Further, in such event, the DOJ or other federal regulatory authorities may determine that the manner in which we operate our technology is deemed to be interstate or foreign commerce and accordingly a violation of such interpretation of the Wire Act. Either event could have a material adverse effect on us or our results of operations, cash flow, or financial condition, could force us to cease our operations (if any), seek bankruptcy protection, and could further subject us to litigation, fines and penalties.
If the Interstate Wagering Amendment is interpreted or applied to prohibit transmissions to foreign countries, it could have a negative impact on our business, financial condition, and results of operations.
Various federal laws prohibit the transportation of lottery tickets, advertisements, and paraphernalia in interstate or foreign commerce or through the mail, except under certain circumstances. Generally, such laws do not apply to state or charitable lotteries conducted in accordance with the laws of the state in which such lottery is operated. The Interstate Wagering Amendment, enacted in 1994, sought to close a “loophole” in the federal laws allowing the sale of lottery tickets across state lines “via computer transaction with no paper crossing state lines.”
The Interstate Wagering Amendment specifically provides: “Whoever . . . being engaged in the business of procuring for a person in 1 State such a ticket, chance, share or interest in a lottery, gift, [sic] enterprise or similar scheme conducted by another State (unless that business is permitted under an agreement between the States in question or appropriate authorities of those States), knowingly transmits in interstate or foreign commerce information to be used for the purpose of procuring such a ticket, chance, share, or interest” shall have committed an offense under 18 U.S.C. § 1301.
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Unless covered by one of the exceptions, therefore, we are prohibited from transporting lottery tickets across state lines or transmitting information to be used for the purpose of procuring a lottery ticket for a lottery conducted by a state to a person in another state. “State” is defined as “a State of the United States, the District of Columbia, the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, or any territory or possession of the United States.” The definition of “foreign government” on the other hand, expressly excludes U.S. states and territories. Based on the use of the words “1 State” and “another State” and the omission of the term “foreign country”, we believe the Interstate Wagering Amendment does not prohibit transmission of information for the purpose of procuring tickets for persons in foreign countries.
If the Interstate Wagering Amendment is interpreted or applied to prohibit transmissions to foreign countries, however, it could have a negative impact on our business, financial condition, and results of operations and could cause the value of our securities to decline or become worthless. Additionally, reinterpretation of the Wire Act to prohibit transmissions of information to foreign countries for the purpose of procuring such tickets could also negatively impact our business. For more information, see “Regulatory and Compliance Risks - If there is a final determination on the applicability of the Wire Act to our operations and it is determined or codified that the Wire Act extends to transmission of lottery games in interstate or foreign commerce, certain of our operations that are not currently restricted by statute or practice to a state’s territorial boundaries may be negatively impacted or eliminated, which may have a material adverse effect on our business, financial conditions, and results of operations.”
Our business model and the conduct of our operations may have to vary in each U.S. jurisdiction where we do business to address the unique features of applicable law to ensure we remain in compliance with that jurisdiction’s laws. Our failure to adequately do so may have an adverse impact on our business, financial condition, and results of operations.
Lottery laws vary among U.S. jurisdictions. This means that our business model and the conduct of our operations may have to vary in each jurisdiction where we do business to ensure we remain in compliance with applicable laws. For example, some jurisdictions prohibit lottery ticket courier services, while some jurisdictions in the U.S. prohibit charging certain fees to the user, and further still, some jurisdictions require us to be licensed or registered, which will require us to incur certain costs in connection with the licensing or registration process. In each U.S. jurisdiction, we may be required to structure our business model and conduct our operations differently to address the unique features of applicable law.
Many of the U.S. jurisdictions in which we have historically done business or anticipate doing business in the future require that lottery game tickets be sold only by licensed retailers and prohibit sale or resale of lottery tickets at prices in excess of the purchase price designated by the applicable regulatory authority. Because lottery tickets are typically considered bearer instruments, we can purchase tickets on behalf of our users and customers and charge certain service fees within the limits of the applicable laws in each U.S. jurisdiction. In most cases, with Virginia being a notable exception, the laws do not specifically prohibit users from engaging our services to purchase lottery tickets on their behalf. However, certain types of fees are prohibited in certain jurisdictions. For example, Pennsylvania prohibits “any fee associated with the acquisition or transportation of lottery tickets or shares” and Illinois law prohibits service charges, handling fees or other costs added to the established price of a ticket. In those states and other states with similar prohibitions, we will need to structure our business model to comply with the relevant laws while still endeavoring to operate profitably.
If a U.S. jurisdiction prohibits our services, imposes onerous licensing or regulatory requirements, or imposes restrictions on the fees we charge, either by enacting new statutes or regulations or by reinterpreting existing statutes and regulations, such restrictions and requirements could have a material adverse effect on our results of operations, cash flow, or financial condition, force us to change our operations in that state, or cease operations in that state altogether.
In some jurisdictions our key executives, certain employees, or other individuals related to our business may be subject to licensing or compliance requirements. Failure by such individuals to obtain the necessary licenses or comply with individual regulatory obligations, could cause our business to be non-compliant with such obligations, or imperil our ability to obtain or maintain licenses that may be necessary for the conduct of our business. In some cases, the remedy to such a situation may require the removal of a key executive or employee and the mandatory redemption or transfer of such person’s equity securities.
We currently hold a license issued by the Texas Lottery Commission to conduct the retail sale of lottery tickets in the State of Texas. We may determine or be required to secure additional licenses from other regulatory authorities with jurisdiction over lottery operations in new markets in which we contemplate expansion. Such licensure may impose additional obligations on us and our operations, which may include continuous disclosure to and an investigation by the applicable regulatory authority into the financial stability, integrity and business experience of the Company, its affiliates, and their respective significant stockholders, directors, officers, and key employees. In markets in which we have not previously operated or in newly regulated markets, licensing regimes may impose licensing requirements or conditions with which we have not previously been required to comply, which may include locating technical infrastructure within the relevant territory, establishing real-time data interfaces with the regulatory authority, implementing consumer protection, responsible gaming and privacy measures, or additional approvals or certifications of our technology, all of which may present operational challenges and material costs, and any of which may have a material adverse effect on us or our results of operations, cash flow, or financial condition.
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(a) To the extent that any stockholder, director, officer or key employee is required to submit to required background checks and provide disclosure and fails to do so, or they or the Company fail to do so to the satisfaction of the relevant regulatory authority, such failure may jeopardize the grant of a license, provide grounds for termination of an existing license, or result in the imposition of penalties. Generally, any person or entity that fails or refuses to apply for a finding of suitability or a license within the prescribed period after being advised by a competent authority that they are required to do so may be denied a license or found unsuitable, as applicable, which may result in our being required to sever our relationship with such person or entity. Further, we may be subject to disciplinary action or suffer revocation of licensure if, following notification that a person or entity is disqualified or unsuitable, we: pay them any dividend or interest upon our shares; (b) allow them to exercise, directly or indirectly, any voting right conferred through the shares they hold; (c) pay them remuneration in any form for services rendered or otherwise; or (d) if required, fail to pursue all lawful efforts to terminate their association with the Company or require them to relinquish their shares.
In some U.S. jurisdictions, certain stockholders may also be required to file applications or submit to background checks. While such requirements typically apply only to stockholders in excess of certain thresholds (such as five or ten percent of the outstanding shares) or to stockholders who also have an active role in the Company, we cannot ensure that such jurisdictions might not seek licensure of additional stockholders in the future.
We cannot ensure that our activities will remain in compliance or that we will continue to receive all licenses or license renewals for which we apply. The loss of a license that we currently hold, or failure to receive a license, could have a material adverse effect on us or on our business, financial condition, or results of operations.
Gaming and lottery authorities may revoke or suspend licenses, levy fines against us, or seize certain of our assets if we violate gaming regulations. We cannot ensure that we will be able to obtain or maintain the necessary licenses or approvals or that the licensing process will not result in delays or adversely affect our operations. Disciplinary action against a license holder in one jurisdiction could lead regulators in other jurisdictions to pursue similar action.
We cannot ensure that regulatory or governmental authorities will not seek to restrict our business in their jurisdictions or institute enforcement proceedings against us. We cannot ensure that any instituted enforcement proceedings will be favorably resolved, or that such proceedings will not have a material adverse effect on our ability to retain and renew existing licenses or to obtain new licenses.
We plan to continually develop internal compliance programs and requirements in an effort to ensure that we comply with legal requirements imposed in connection with our activities and generally applicable to all publicly traded companies, however, we cannot ensure that they will prevent the violation of one or more laws in any jurisdiction in which we conduct business, which may have an adverse impact on our business, financial condition, and results of operations.
We plan to continually develop internal compliance programs in ongoing efforts to ensure our compliance with legal requirements imposed in connection with our business activities and with legal requirements generally applicable to all publicly traded companies. While we are firmly committed to full compliance with all applicable laws, and plan to continue to establish appropriate procedures and policies, we cannot ensure that our compliance program will prevent the violation of one or more laws or regulations, or that a violation by us, an employee, a customer, a subsidiary or an affiliate will not result in the imposition of a monetary fine or suspension or revocation of one or more of our governmental licenses, findings of suitability, registrations, permits and approvals, which could have a material adverse effect on us or on our results of operations, cash flow, or financial condition.
While we are confident that we will face additional regulatory requirements as we expand, we cannot predict the effect of future regulatory requirements to which our operations might be subject or the manner in which such requirements might be enforced. The compliance policies and procedures we implement may not always be followed at all times by directors, management, employees, agents, partners and other related parties, whether through neglect or intention. Our policies and procedures have not and may not effectively detect and prevent violations of applicable laws by one or more of our directors, management, employees, agents, partners, customers, affiliates, or other related or third parties. As a result, we or our directors, management, employees, agents, partners, customers, affiliates, or other related or third parties could be subject to investigations, criminal and civil penalties, sanctions or other enforcement measures that in turn could have a material adverse effect on our results of operations, cash flow, or financial condition.
We take our corporate responsibility to our users, customers, and the requirements of the regulatory authorities in the jurisdictions in which we operate very seriously and are focused on maintaining a safe and responsible gaming environment. Our failure to remain in compliance with underage and responsible gaming requirements or any amendments or additions to such requirements could have a material adverse effect on us, our reputation and brand, or on our business, results of operations, or financial condition.
We are committed to compliance with the underage and responsible gaming requirements set forth in the domestic and international statutes and regulations in the jurisdictions in which we do business and, as applicable, that govern our operations. We take our corporate responsibility to our users, customers and the regulators in the jurisdictions in which we operate very seriously and are focused on maintaining a safe and responsible gaming environment. We will continue to evaluate and develop our technology to meet the statutory requirements regarding responsible gaming and self-exclusion as well as our own self-imposed objectives regarding corporate social responsibility, as demonstrated by our ongoing compliance objectives and policies.
All of the U.S. jurisdictions and most of the foreign jurisdictions in which we operate prohibit sales of lottery tickets to persons under 18 years of age. We have instituted know-your-customer requirements to aid our efforts in identifying minors and preventing them from using our services. In many cases, these requirements apply to our lottery retailer partners and may not apply to us. Nevertheless, if we fail to abide by these requirements, our partners may be reluctant to do business with us or the applicable regulatory authorities may amend the requirements to apply specifically to us, to the extent that they do not already do so.
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Many jurisdictions, especially foreign jurisdictions, are imposing more stringent rules with regard to underage and responsible gaming. This trend could continue to spread and both U.S. and foreign jurisdictions may strengthen underage and responsible gaming requirements. In the event that any jurisdiction in which we operate mandates additional requirements regarding corporate social responsibility, responsible gaming, self-exclusion, or similar mandates, we may be required to undertake additional technological initiatives to remain in compliance. Implementation of any such initiatives may present operational challenges and material costs and divert the attention of management and our systems developers and engineers, any of which may have a material adverse effect on us or our results of operations, cash flow, or financial condition. The failure to remain in compliance with underage and responsible gaming requirements or any amendments or additions to such requirements could have a material adverse effect on us or on our business, results of operations, or financial condition.
We are subject to governmental laws and requirements of the U.S. and various foreign jurisdictions in which we operate regarding anti-bribery, anti-corruption, economic and trade sanctions, anti-money laundering, and counter-terror financing. Alleged or actual violation of any of these laws or requirements could negatively impact our brand and reputation, our ability to obtain or maintain any governmental licenses, findings of suitability, registrations, permits, and approvals, any of which could negatively impact our business, financial condition, and results of operations.
As a digital company operating within the U.S. and subject to the jurisdiction of various foreign governments and regulatory agencies, we are accordingly subject to domestic and foreign laws regarding anti-bribery, anti-corruption, economic and trade sanctions, anti-money laundering, and counter-terror financing.
Our operations and our growth plans, including in connection with our intent to expand into new markets and undertake strategic acquisitions when we have sufficient funding to do so, may bring our officers, directors, employees, and representatives into contact with “foreign officials” responsible for issuing or renewing governmental licenses, findings of suitability, registrations, permits and approvals, or for otherwise enforcing governmental regulations and requirements. In our contact with such foreign officials, we are required to comply with anti-corruption laws and regulations imposed by governments around the world with jurisdiction over our operations, which include the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (the “FCPA”), and the U.K. Bribery Act 2010 (the “U.K. Bribery Act”), as well as corresponding laws and regulations of the other countries where we do business. The FCPA, the U.K. Bribery Act, and other applicable laws prohibit us and our officers, directors, employees, and business partners acting on our behalf, from corruptly offering, promising, authorizing, or providing anything of value to foreign officials for the purposes of influencing official decisions or obtaining or retaining business or otherwise obtaining favorable treatment. The U.K. Bribery Act also prohibits non-governmental “commercial” bribery and accepting bribes. Our operations, trade practices, investment decisions, and partnering activities may be restricted as a result.
In addition, some of the foreign locations in which we operate lack a developed legal system and may experience elevated levels of corruption. Our foreign operations expose us to the risk of inadvertently violating, or being accused of violating, anti-corruption laws and regulations. Our failure to successfully comply with any such laws and regulations may expose us to brand and reputational harm, as well as significant sanctions, including criminal fines, imprisonment, civil penalties, disgorgement of profits, and injunctions, as well as impacting our ability to maintain or obtain any governmental licenses, findings of suitability, registrations, permits and approvals. Further, investigations of alleged violations can result in substantial costs, fines, or penalties and diversion of our resources. We are continuously developing, monitoring and maintaining the various governmental requirements to comply with applicable anti-corruption laws and regulations, however, there is no certainty that they will effectively prevent violations for which we may be held responsible, or at all.
We are currently required to comply with U.S. economic and trade sanctions administered by the U.S. Department of Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (“OFAC”). Our Platform may be accessible from a sanctioned country in violation of applicable trade and economic sanctions. As part of our ongoing compliance efforts, we are implementing requirements to ensure that we do not violate these laws and regulations, however, our failure to adequately fulfill such requirements, fully perform any and all compliance requirements, or otherwise breach any compliance requirements of the OFAC could result in our being subject to penalties, fines or other enforcement actions.
We process, support and execute financial transactions as part of our business and disburse funds on behalf of certain of our users, including receiving payment card information and processing payments for and due to our users. Accordingly, we may be subject to various U.S. and foreign government anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing laws and regulations that prohibit, among other things, involvement in transferring the proceeds, in whole or in part, for criminal or terrorist activities, including, for example, in the U.S., the Bank Secrecy Act of 1970, as amended (the “BSA”), and certain provisions of the Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001 (the “Patriot Act”). Although we have developed a risk-based anti-money laundering program that we are implementing, in the event that we breach any of these laws and regulations that are applicable to us, we could be subject to significant civil fines, penalties, inquiries, audits, investigations, enforcement actions, and criminal and civil liability.
Any failure on our part to implement, maintain or follow the necessary processes and policies to comply with these regulations and requirements, or to adapt our processes and policies to changes in laws or regulations would adversely impact our brand and reputation, or our ability to obtain or maintain any governmental licenses, findings of suitability, registrations, permits and approvals, and would negatively impact our business, financial condition and results of operations.
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We are subject to domestic and foreign laws relating to processing certain financial transactions, including payment card transactions, and failure to comply with those laws, even if inadvertent, could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition, and results of operations.
As a result of our undertaking certain payment transactions on behalf of certain of our users, including receiving payment card information and processing payments, we have been subject and may continue to be subject to or we may voluntarily comply with a number of rules, laws and regulations relating to privacy and information security, electronic fund transfers, payment services and convenience fees. If we were found to be in violation of applicable rules, laws and regulations, we could be subject to additional liability, including card association and governmental fines or other sanctions, and we could be forced to otherwise change our business practices in certain jurisdictions, or be required to obtain additional licenses or regulatory approvals.
We have implemented procedures and continue to implement policies and procedures to preserve and protect payment data against loss, corruption, misappropriation caused by systems failures, unauthorized access or misuse. However, to the extent we retain our user’s data, we could be subject to liability claims by users for the misuse of that information, which could negatively impact our ability to utilize certain payment cards, or undertake certain transactions, which could disrupt our business. Failure to comply with these rules and laws may subject us to, among other things, additional costs or changes to our business practices, liability for monetary damages, fines or criminal prosecution, reputation and brand damage, and restrictions on our ability to process and support financial transactions, any of which could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition and results of operations.
Tax and other regulatory authorities may successfully assert that we have not properly collected or remitted withholding taxes, and as a result may successfully impose additional obligations, fines, penalties or other financial liability on us, any of which could adversely affect our business, financial condition, and results of operations.
Federal tax rules generally require payers to report payments to unrelated parties to the Internal Revenue Service. In the event of our failure to comply with such reporting obligations, due to failure in the application of our judgment in evaluating our obligations, our effective compliance with our internal process and its execution, or with respect to the process and manner in which we calculate and remit amounts due and owing to taxing authorities timely or at all, could subject us to brand and reputational damage, fines, penalties, and other financial liability, any of which could harm our business, financial condition, and results of operations and could cause the value of our securities to decline or become worthless.
In certain instances, we have collected and remitted applicable withholding taxes in the claims and redemption process. Regulatory and tax authorities may raise questions about, or challenge or disagree with, this practice, or in the application of our judgment in evaluating our obligations, our effective compliance with our internal process and its execution, or with respect to the process and the manner in which taxes are calculated, remitted and withheld as a result. A successful assertion by one or more regulatory or tax authorities requiring us to alter our practice could result in brand and reputational damage, fines, penalties and other financial liability, or discourage our users and commercial partners from using our Platform, any of which could harm our business, financial condition, and results of operations and could cause the value of our securities to decline or become worthless.
Human Capital Risks
Our success will depend on our ability to hire employees in the future. Recruitment and retention of these individuals is vital to growing our business and our executing our business plans. The loss of any of our key executives or other key employees could harm our business.
We currently have nine employees who manage and operate our business, including our Chief Executive Officer, Chief Financial Officer and Chief Operating Officer, other employees as well as thirteen key outside contractors. While we have experienced significant turnover of our executive officers in past years, we expect that the leadership of our current key executives and employees will be a critical element of our success in the future. The departure, death or disability of any one of our executive officers or employees or other extended or permanent loss of any of their services, or any negative market or industry perception with respect to any of them or their loss, could have a material adverse effect on our business.
In addition, our failure to re-hire, or hire new employees in the future may limit our ability to restart our business operations and generate revenue. We believe our success and our ability to compete and grow following the Operational Cessation will depend in large part on the efforts and talents of our current and future employees and on our ability to retain highly skilled personnel. The competition for these types of personnel is intense and we compete with other potential employers for the services of appropriately skilled employees. As a result, we may not succeed in hiring and retaining the executives and other key employees that we need. Employees, particularly highly skilled developers and engineers are in high demand, and we will need to devote significant resources to identifying, hiring, training, successfully integrating and retaining such employees, including significant financial resources, which we may not have when needed. We cannot provide assurance that we will be able to attract or retain such highly qualified personnel in the future. In addition, the loss of future employees or the inability to hire skilled employees as necessary could result in significant disruptions to our business, and the integration of replacement personnel could be time-consuming and expensive and cause additional disruptions to our business.
If we do not succeed in attracting, hiring, and integrating excellent personnel, or retaining and motivating existing personnel, we may be unable to grow effectively and our business, financial condition and results of operations could be seriously harmed.
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Illegal, improper, or otherwise inappropriate activity of our couriers, whether or not occurring while performing their duties for us, could expose us to liability and adversely affect our business, reputation, brand, financial condition, and results of operations.
Illegal, improper, or otherwise inappropriate activities by our couriers, including the activities of individuals who may have previously engaged with, but are not then receiving or providing services offered through, our Platform or individuals who are intentionally impersonating users or couriers or the activities of couriers while purchasing lottery game tickets, may occur, which could adversely affect our reputation, brand, business, financial condition, and results of operations and could cause the value of our securities to decline or become worthless. These activities may include attempted theft, unauthorized use of payment card or financial account information, user identity theft, theft of lottery games, and other misconduct. Such activities may result in injuries or damage for users and third parties, or business interruptions, reputational and brand damage, or other significant liabilities for us.
While we have implemented various measures intended to anticipate, identify, and address the risk of these types of activities, these measures may not adequately address or prevent all illegal, improper, or otherwise inappropriate activity by these parties from occurring and such conduct could expose us to liability, including through litigation, or adversely affect our brand or reputation. At the same time, if the measures we have taken to guard against these illegal, improper, or otherwise inappropriate activities, such as our requirement that all couriers undergo a background check, are too restrictive and inadvertently prevent couriers and users otherwise in good standing from using our Platform, or if we are unable to implement and communicate these measures fairly and transparently or are perceived to have failed to do so, the growth and engagement of the number of couriers and users on our Platform and their use of our Platform could be adversely affected. Any of the foregoing risks could adversely affect our business, financial condition, and results of operations and could cause the value of our securities to decline or become worthless.
Risks Relating to our Dependence on Third Parties
Our business model depends upon the compatibility between our B2C Platform and the major mobile and other operating systems and upon third-party platforms for the distribution of our product offerings. If Google Play or the Apple App Store or other mobile download sites prevent users from downloading our apps or if our advertising is blocked or rejected from being delivered to our users, our ability to grow our revenue, profitability, and prospects may be adversely affected.
When operational, our users access our B2C Platform product offerings on mobile devices and various web applications, and accordingly, our business model depends upon the compatibility between our application and all major mobile and web operating systems. Third parties with whom we do not have any formal relationships control the design of such devices and operating systems. These parties frequently introduce new devices, and from time to time they may introduce new operating systems or modify existing ones. Network carriers may also impact the ability to download applications or access specified content on mobile devices.
In addition, when operational, we rely upon third-party platforms for distribution of our product offerings. The Google Play store and Apple App Store are global application distribution platforms and have been the main distribution channels for our application. As such, the promotion, distribution and operation of our application are subject to the respective distribution platforms’ standard terms and policies for application developers which are very broad and subject to frequent changes and interpretations. Furthermore, the distribution platforms may not enforce their standard terms and policies for application developers consistently and uniformly across all applications and with such publishers.
There is no guarantee that popular mobile devices will support or feature our product offerings when operational, or that mobile device users will continue to use our product offerings rather than competing products. We are dependent on the interoperability of our technology with popular mobile and web operating systems, technologies, networks and standards that we do not control, such as the Android and iOS operating systems, and any changes, bugs, technical or regulatory issues in such systems, our relationships with mobile manufacturers and carriers, or in their terms of service or policies that degrade our offerings’ functionality, reduce or eliminate our ability to distribute our offerings, give preferential treatment to competitive products, limit our ability to deliver high quality offerings, or impose fees or other charges related to delivering our offerings, could adversely affect our product usage and monetization on mobile devices.
Furthermore, we may not successfully cultivate relationships with key industry participants or develop product offerings that operate effectively with these technologies, systems, networks, regulations, or standards. If it is difficult for our users to access and use our offerings on their mobile devices, if our users choose not to access or use our offerings on their mobile devices, or if our users choose to use mobile products that do not offer access to our offerings, our user growth, retention, and engagement could be seriously harmed. In addition, if any of the third-party platforms used for distribution of our product offerings were to limit or disable advertising on their platforms, either because of technological constraints or because the managers of these distribution platforms wished to impair our ability to serve ads on them, our ability to generate revenue could be harmed. Also, technologies may be developed that can block the display of our ads. These changes could materially impact the way we do business, and if we or our advertising partners are unable to quickly and effectively adjust to those changes, there could be an adverse effect on our business, financial condition, and results of operations and could cause the value of our securities to decline or become worthless.
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We rely on third-party providers for validation services regarding our users, and if such providers fail to perform adequately, provide inaccurate information, or we do not maintain business relationships with them, our business, financial condition, and results of operations could be adversely affected.
We have relied and expect to rely in the future on third-party providers to assist in some or all of the required validation of the identity, verification of the age, or geo-location of our prospective users, however, there is no guarantee that such third-party systems will perform adequately, or at all, or be effective. To the extent that we rely on third parties for our identity, age, or geolocation systems to ensure that we are in compliance with certain laws and regulations, any service disruption to those systems would prohibit us from operating our offerings and would adversely affect our business. Additionally, incorrect or misleading geolocation, age, and identity verification data with respect to current or potential users received from third-party service providers may result in us inadvertently allowing access to our offerings to individuals who should not be permitted to access them, or otherwise inadvertently deny access to individuals who should be able to access our offerings, in each case based on inaccurate identity or geographic location determination. When operational, our third-party geolocation services provider relies on its ability to obtain information necessary to determine geolocation from mobile devices, operating systems, and other sources. When operational, changes, disruptions, or temporary or permanent failure to access such sources by our third-party services providers may result in their inability to accurately determine the location of our users. Moreover, our inability to maintain our contracts with third-party services providers, or to replace them with equivalent third parties, may result in our inability to access geolocation, age and identity verification data necessary for our day-to-day operations. If any of these risks materializes, we may be subject to disciplinary action, fines, lawsuits, and our business, financial condition, and results of operations could be adversely affected.
We rely on third-party payment processors to process payments and withdrawals made by our users, and if we cannot manage our relationships with such third parties and other payment-related risks, our business, financial condition, and results of operations could be adversely affected.
When operational, we rely on a limited number of third-party payment processors to process payments and withdrawals made by our users. If any of our third-party payment processors terminates its relationship with us or refuses to renew their agreements with us on commercially reasonable terms, we would need to find an alternate payment processor, and may not be able to secure similar terms or replace such payment processors in an acceptable time frame. Further, the software and services provided by our third-party payment processors may not meet our expectations, contain errors or vulnerabilities, be compromised or experience outages. Any of these risks could cause us to lose our ability to accept payments or other payment transactions or make timely payments to our users, any of which could make our technology less trustworthy and convenient and adversely affect our ability to attract and retain our users.
Nearly all of our payments have been made by credit card, debit card, automated clearing house transactions, or through other third-party payment services, which subjects us to certain regulations and to the risk of fraud. We may in the future offer new payment options to users that may be subject to additional regulations and risks. We are also subject to a number of other laws and regulations relating to the payments we accept from our users and customers, including with respect to money laundering, money transfers, privacy, and information security. If we fail to comply with applicable rules and regulations, we may be subject to civil or criminal penalties, fines or higher transaction fees and may lose our ability to accept online payments or other payment card transactions, which could make our offerings less convenient and attractive to our users and customers. If any of these events were to occur, our business, financial condition, and results of operations could be adversely affected.
For example, if we are deemed to be a money transmitter as defined by applicable regulation, we could be subject to certain laws, rules and regulations enforced by multiple authorities and governing bodies in the U.S. including numerous state and local agencies who may define money transmitter differently. Certain states in the U.S. may have a more expansive view of who qualifies as a money transmitter. Additionally, outside of the U.S., we could be subject to additional laws, rules and regulations related to the provision of payments and financial services, and if we expand into new jurisdictions, the foreign regulations and regulators governing our business that we are subject to will expand as well. If we are found to be a money transmitter under any applicable regulation and we are not in compliance with such regulations, we may be subject to fines or other penalties in one or more jurisdictions levied by federal, state or local regulators, including state Attorneys General, as well as those levied by foreign regulators. In addition to fines, penalties for failing to comply with applicable rules and regulations could include criminal and civil proceedings, forfeiture of significant assets or other enforcement actions. We could also be required to make changes to our business practices or compliance programs as a result of regulatory scrutiny.
Additionally, our payment processors require us to comply with payment card network operating rules, which are set and interpreted by the payment card networks. The payment card networks could adopt new operating rules or interpret or reinterpret existing rules in ways that might restrict or prohibit us from using certain payment methods in providing certain offerings to some users, be costly to implement or difficult to implement. We have agreed to reimburse our payment processors for fines they are assessed by payment card networks if we or our users violate these rules. Any of the foregoing risks could adversely affect our business, financial condition and results of operations.
Our technology contains third-party open-source software components, and failure to comply with the terms of the underlying open-source software licenses could restrict our ability to provide our offerings.
Our technology contains software modules licensed to us by third-party authors under “open source” licenses, including the distributed ledger technology, which we currently use and intend to continue to use in our Platform. Use and distribution of open-source software may entail greater risks than use of third-party commercial software, as open-source licensors generally do not provide support, warranties, indemnification or other contractual protections regarding infringement claims or the quality of the code. In addition, the public availability of such software may make it easier for others to compromise our technology.
Some open-source licenses contain requirements that we make available source code for modifications or derivative works we create based upon the type of open-source software we use or grant other licenses to our intellectual property. If we combine our software with open-source software in a certain manner, we could, under certain open-source licenses, be required to release the source code of our software to the public. This would allow our competitors to create similar offerings with lower development effort and time and ultimately could result in a loss of our competitive advantages. Alternatively, to avoid the public release of the affected portions of our source code, we could be required to expend substantial time and resources to re-engineer some or all of our software.
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Although we monitor our use of open-source software to avoid subjecting our technology to conditions we do not intend, the terms of many open-source licenses have not been interpreted by U.S. or foreign courts, and there is a risk that these licenses could be construed in a way that could impose unanticipated conditions or restrictions on our ability to provide or distribute our technology. From time to time, there have been claims challenging the ownership of open-source software against companies that incorporate open-source software into their solutions. As a result, we could be subject to lawsuits by parties claiming ownership of what we believe to be open-source software. Moreover, we cannot assure you that our processes for controlling our use of open-source software in our technology will be effective. If we are held to have breached or failed to fully comply with all the terms and conditions of an open source software license, we could face infringement or other liability, or be required to seek costly licenses from third parties to continue providing our offerings on terms that are not economically feasible, to re-engineer our technology, to discontinue or delay the provision of our offerings if re-engineering could not be accomplished on a timely basis or to make generally available, in source code form, our proprietary code, any of which could adversely affect our business, financial condition, and results of operations and could cause the value of our securities to decline or become worthless.
If we cannot license rights to use third-party technologies on reasonable terms, we may not be able to commercialize new products or services in the future.
In the future, we may license third-party technology to develop or commercialize new products or offer new services. In return for the use of a third-party’s technology, we may agree to pay the licensor royalties based on sales of our products or services. Royalties are a component of cost of revenue and affect the margins on our products. We may also need to negotiate licenses to use third-party intellectual property. Our business may suffer if we are unable to enter into the necessary licenses on acceptable terms, or at all, if any necessary licenses are subsequently terminated, if the licensors fail to abide by the terms of the license or fail to prevent infringement by third parties, or if the licensed patents or other rights are found to be invalid or unenforceable.
We rely on relationships with lottery organizations from which we acquire lottery data information for the provision of our Data Services. Loss of existing relationships or failure to expand existing relationships may cause loss of competitive advantage or require us to modify, limit or discontinue certain offerings, which could materially affect our business, financial condition and results of operations.
We rely on relationships with lottery organizations from which we acquire rights to collect and supply lottery data that we provide to our users and customers. The future success of our Data Service business may depend, in part, on our ability to obtain, retain and expand relationships with lottery organizations. We have arrangements with lottery organizations for rights to their data. Our arrangements with lottery organizations may not continue to be available to us. In the event that we lose existing arrangements or cannot continue and expand existing arrangements, we may lose our competitive advantage or be required to discontinue or limit our offerings or services. The loss of such arrangements may cause loss of competitive advantage and could materially adversely affect our financial condition, business and results of operations.
Risks Relating to Future Growth
Our strategy anticipates substantial growth, and if we fail to adequately scale product offerings and manage our entry into new territories, our business and reputation may be harmed.
Our business strategy contemplates substantial growth in our user and customer base, and a strategy to capture a larger share of a dynamic lottery market and shifting demographic, primarily in the U.S. but internationally as well. Our growth has previously placed, and is expected to continue to place, a significant strain on our managerial, administrative, operational and financial resources and our infrastructure. Our future success will depend, in part, upon the ability of our senior management to manage growth effectively. This will require us to, among other things:
● | implement additional management information systems; |
● | further develop our operating, administrative, legal, compliance, financial and accounting system and controls; |
● | hire additional qualified personnel and develop human capital; |
● | comply with additional regulatory regimes, securing licenses, findings of suitability, registrations, permits and approvals; and |
● | maintain close coordination among our engineering, operations, legal, compliance, finance, sales and marketing and customer service and support organizations. |
Failure to accomplish any of these requirements could adversely affect our ability to deliver our product, service, and systems offerings in a timely fashion, fulfill existing commitments or attract and retain new users and customers.
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We may face difficulties as we expand our operations into new markets in which we have limited or no prior operating experience.
Our capacity for growth depends, in part, on our ability to expand our operations into, and compete effectively in, new local entertainment, gaming and Online Lottery markets. It may be difficult for us to understand and accurately predict consumer preferences and spending habits in these new local markets. In addition, each market has unique regulatory dynamics. These include laws and regulations that can directly or indirectly affect our ability to operate. In addition, each market is subject to distinct competitive and operational dynamics. These include our ability to offer more attractive products, services and systems than alternative options and our ability to efficiently attract and retain users and customers, all of which affect our sales, results of operations, and key business metrics. As a result, we may experience fluctuations in our results of operations due to the changing dynamics in the local markets where we operate. If we invest substantial time and resources to expand our operations and are unable to manage these risks effectively, our business, financial condition, and results of operations could be adversely affected.
International Operations Risks
The international scope of our operations may expose us to increased legal and regulatory risks, and our international operations and corporate and financing structure may expose us to potentially adverse tax consequences.
We have international operations, including in Mexico as a result of the closing of our acquisition in June 2021 of Global Gaming Enterprises, Inc., which is a majority stockholder of Electronicos y de Comunicacion, S.A.P.I de C.V. and JuegaLotto, S.A. de C.V. Accordingly, our business is subject to risks resulting from differing legal and regulatory requirements, political, social and economic conditions, and unforeseeable developments in a variety of jurisdictions. Our international operations are subject to the following risks, among others:
● | political instability; |
● | international hostilities, military actions, wars, terrorist or cyber-terrorist activities, natural disasters, pandemics, and infrastructure disruptions; |
● | differing economic cycles and adverse economic conditions; |
● | unexpected changes in regulatory environments and government interference in the economy, including lottery and gaming, data privacy and advertising laws and regulations; |
● | changes to economic and anti-money laundering sanctions, laws and regulations; |
● | varying tax regimes, including with respect to the imposition of withholding taxes on remittances and other payments by our partnerships or subsidiaries; |
● | differing labor regulations; |
● | foreign exchange controls and restrictions on repatriation of funds; |
● | fluctuations in currency exchange rates; |
● | inability to collect payments or seek recourse under or comply with ambiguous or vague commercial or other laws; |
● | insufficient protection against product piracy and rights infringement and differing protections for intellectual property rights; |
● | varying attitudes towards lottery games and betting by foreign governments; |
● | difficulties in attracting and retaining qualified management and employees, or rationalizing our workforce; |
● | differing business practices, which may require us to enter into agreements that include non-standard terms; and |
● | difficulties in penetrating new markets due to entrenched competitors, lack of recognition of our brands or lack of local acceptance of our products, services and systems. |
Our overall success as a global business depends, in part, on our ability to anticipate and effectively manage these risks, and there can be no assurance that we will be able to do so without incurring unexpected costs. If we are not able to manage the risks related to our international operations, our business, financial condition, and results of operations may be materially affected.
We have expanded our presence internationally, and any future actions or escalations that affect trade relations may cause global economic turmoil and potentially have a negative impact on our business. In particular, we may have access to fewer business opportunities and our international operations may be negatively impacted.
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As a result of the intended growth of the international scope of our operations and our corporate and financing structure, we may become subject to taxation in, and to the tax laws and regulations of, multiple jurisdictions. Adverse developments in these laws or regulations, or any change in position regarding the application, administration or interpretation of these laws or regulations in any applicable jurisdiction, could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition and results of operations. Furthermore, changes in or to the interpretation of the tax laws or tax treaties of the countries in which we operate may adversely affect the manner in which we have structured our business operations and legal entity structure to efficiently realize income or capital gains and mitigate withholding taxes and may also subject us to tax and return filing obligations in such countries that do not currently apply to us. Such changes may increase our tax burden or may cause us to incur additional costs and expenses in compliance with such changes. In addition, the tax authorities in any applicable jurisdiction may disagree with the positions we have taken or intend to take regarding the tax treatment or characterization of any of our transactions, including the tax treatment or characterization of our indebtedness. If any applicable tax authorities were to successfully challenge the tax treatment or characterization of any of our transactions, it could result in the disallowance of deductions, the imposition of withholding taxes, the reallocation of income or other consequences that could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition and results of operations.
In addition, the U.S. Congress, the U.K. Government, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (the “OECD”), and other government agencies have had an extended focus on issues related to the taxation of multinational corporations. Further, the introduction of a digital services tax, such as the U.K. digital services tax introduced with effect from April 1, 2020, may increase our tax burden, which could adversely affect our business, financial condition and results of operations. Finally, the international scope of our business operations could subject us to multiple overlapping tax regimes that can make it difficult to determine what our obligations are in particular situations.
Fluctuating foreign currency and exchange rates may negatively impact our business, results of operations, and financial position.
Due to our foreign operations, a portion of our business is denominated in foreign currencies. As a result, fluctuations in foreign currency and exchange rates may have an impact on our business, results of operations and financial position. Foreign currency exchange rates have fluctuated and may continue to fluctuate. Significant foreign currency exchange rate fluctuations may negatively impact our international revenue, which in turn would affect our consolidated revenue. Currencies may be affected by internal factors, general economic conditions and external developments in other countries, all of which can have an adverse impact on a country’s currency. Currently, we are not party to any hedging transactions intended to reduce our exposure to exchange rate fluctuations. We may seek to enter into hedging transactions in the future, but we may be unable to enter into these transactions successfully, on acceptable terms or at all. We cannot predict whether we will incur foreign exchange losses in the future. Further, significant foreign exchange fluctuations resulting in a decline in the respective local currency may decrease the value of our foreign assets, as well as decrease our revenues and earnings from our foreign subsidiaries, which would reduce our profitability and adversely affect our financial position.
Intellectual Property Risks
If we are unable to protect our intellectual property and proprietary rights or prevent its unauthorized use by third parties, our ability to compete in the market or our business, financial condition, and results of operations may be harmed.
We have and continue to seek to protect our intellectual property to ensure that our competitors do not use such intellectual property. However, intellectual property laws in the U.S. and in other jurisdictions may afford differing and limited protection, may not permit us to gain or maintain a competitive advantage, and may not prevent our competitors from duplicating our products, designing around our proprietary products or technology, or gaining access to our proprietary information and technology, and are costly and time consuming.
Our success may depend, in part, on our ability to obtain trademark protection for the names or symbols under which we market our products and to obtain copyright protection, which may not always be successful. Also, we are continually evaluating opportunities to file patents. Any future patent applications we hold or have rights to may not result in an issued patent, and if patents are issued, they may not necessarily provide meaningful protection against competitors and competitive technologies or adequately protect our then-current technologies. Additionally, even if granted, we may not be able to build and maintain goodwill in our trademarks or obtain trademark or patent protection, and there can be no assurance that any trademark, copyright, or issued patent will provide competitive advantages for us or that our intellectual property will not be successfully challenged or circumvented by competitors.
As of December 31, 2023, we had one trademark, “Lottery.com”, registered with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. As of December 31, 2022, the registrations of our LOTTERY.COM, AUTOLOTTO and SPORTS.COM word marks and SPORTS.COM logo were pending with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. In March 2023, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office denied the registration of the SPORTS.COM word mark and the appeal period has expired. The registration of the SPORTS.COM logo has also been denied and the Company is currently considering whether to appeal such denial. We are also using or have common-law trademark rights in the trademarks AUTOLOTTO, SPORTS.COM, and “TAP, TAP, TICKET.”
We may not be able to prevent the unauthorized disclosure or use of our technical knowledge or trade secrets. For example, there can be no assurance that consultants, vendors, partners, former employees, or current employees and contractors will not breach their obligations regarding non-disclosure and restrictions on use. Anyone could seek to challenge, invalidate, circumvent, or render unenforceable any trademark or patent that we seek protection over in the future. We may not be able to detect the unauthorized use of our intellectual property, prevent breaches of our cybersecurity efforts, or take appropriate steps to enforce our proprietary or intellectual property rights effectively. In addition, certain contractual provisions, including restrictions on use, copying, transfer, and disclosure of software, may be unenforceable under the laws of certain jurisdictions.
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We intend to enforce our intellectual property rights, and from time to time may initiate claims against third parties that we believe are infringing our intellectual property rights. Litigation brought to protect and enforce our intellectual property rights could be costly, time-consuming, and distracting to management, could fail to obtain the results sought, and could have a material adverse effect on our results of operations, business, and financial condition.
The intellectual property rights of others, including claims of third parties that we are infringing on their intellectual property and proprietary rights, may prevent us from developing new products, services and systems, entering new markets or may expose us to significant license fees, liability, or costly litigation.
Our success depends, in part, on our ability to continually adapt our business activities, products, services, and systems to incorporate new technologies and to expand into entertainment and gaming markets that may be created by new technologies. If technologies are protected by the intellectual property rights of others, including our competitors, we may be prevented from introducing products, services or systems based on these technologies or expanding into markets created by these technologies. If the intellectual property rights of others prevent us from taking advantage of innovative technologies, our prospects, results of operations, cash flows, and financial condition may be adversely affected.
Our business activities, products, services, and systems may infringe upon the proprietary rights of others, and other parties may assert infringement claims against us. In addition to infringement claims, third parties may allege claims of invalidity or unenforceability against us or against our licensees or manufacturers in connection with their use of our technology. A successful challenge to, or invalidation of, one of our intellectual property interests, a successful claim of infringement by a third party against us, our business activities, products, services and systems, or one of our licensees in connection with the use of our technologies, or an unsuccessful claim of infringement made by us against a third party or its business activities, products, services and systems could adversely affect our business or cause us financial harm. Any such claim and any resulting litigation, should it occur, could:
● | be expensive and time consuming to defend or require us to pay significant amounts in damages; |
● | invalidate our proprietary rights; |
● | cause us to cease making, licensing or using products, services or systems that incorporate the challenged intellectual property; |
● | require us to redesign, reengineer or rebrand our products, services or systems or limit our ability to bring new products, services or systems to the market in the future; |
● | require us to enter into costly or burdensome royalty, licensing or settlement agreements in order to obtain the right to undertake a business activity or use a product, process or component; |
● | impact the commercial viability of the products, services and systems that are the subject of the claim during the pendency of such claim; and |
● | require us by way of injunction to remove products, services, or systems or stop implementing the business practice, or stop selling or offering new products, services. |
Legal Proceedings Risks
We are party to current litigation and investigations in various jurisdictions and with various plaintiffs and we may be subject to future litigation or investigations in the operation of our business. An adverse outcome in one or more proceedings could adversely affect our business, financial condition, and results of operations.
We are, and have been party to, and we may in the future increasingly face the risk of, claims, lawsuits, investigations, and other proceedings, including those which may involve securities, competition and antitrust, anti-money laundering, OFAC, regulatory, lottery or gaming, intellectual property, privacy, consumer protection, accessibility claims, tax, labor and employment, commercial disputes, services and other matters. Litigation to defend us against claims by third parties, or to enforce any rights that we may have against third parties, may be necessary, which could result in substantial costs, fines or penalties and diversion of our resources, causing a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition, and results of operations and could cause the value of our securities to decline or become worthless. For example, as described in more detail in Item 3. Legal Proceedings, the TinBu Plaintiffs (as defined below) filed a claim against the Company for breach of contract and misrepresentation. If the lawsuit results in an unfavorable judgment against the Company, our Data Services business could be negatively impacted, and we may lose some of TinBu’s well-known clients. In addition, defending against these claims will require the Company to expend substantial time and money, which could divert management attention from restarting operations.
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Any litigation to which we are a party may result in an onerous or unfavorable judgment that may not be reversed upon appeal, or in payments of substantial monetary damages or fines, the posting of bonds requiring significant collateral, letters of credit or similar instruments, or we may decide to settle lawsuits on similarly unfavorable terms. These proceedings could also result in reputational harm and brand damage, criminal sanctions, consent decrees or orders preventing us from offering certain products or requiring a change in our business practices in costly ways or requiring development of non-infringing or otherwise altered products or technologies. Litigation and other claims and regulatory proceedings against us could result in unexpected disciplinary actions, expenses and liabilities, which could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition, and results of operations and could cause the value of our securities to decline or become worthless. See Item 3. Legal Proceedings for additional information.
Item 3. Legal Proceedings
J. Streicher
On July 29, 2022, the Company filed its original Verified Complaint for Breach of Contract and Specific Performance (the “Streicher Complaint”) against J. Streicher Financial, LLC (“Streicher”) in the Court of Chancery of the State of Delaware (the “Chancery Court”), styled AutoLotto, Inc. dba Lottery.com v. J. Streicher Financial, LLC (Case No. 2022-0661-MTZ). In the Streicher Complaint, the Company alleged that Streicher breached the contract entered into by the parties on March 9, 2022 and demanded that Streicher return $16,500,000 it owes to the Company. On September 26, 2022, the Chancery Court entered an order in favor of the Company, Granting with Modifications Company’s Motion for Partial Summary Judgment in the amount of $16,500,000 (the “Streicher Judgment”). On October 27, 2022, the Chancery Court further awarded the Company $397,037 in attorney’s fees (the “Fee Order”). On November 15, 2022, the Company initiated efforts against Streicher to seek collections on the Judgment. On December 8, 2022, the Company’s prior attorney Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, LLP (“Skadden”) filed its Combined Motion to Withdraw as Counsel and For a Charging Lien in amount of $3,024,201 for legal fees unpaid by Company (“Skadden’s Motion”). On December 30, 2022, the Company filed its response to Skadden’s Motion, alleging that the Chancery Court should deny Skadden’s Motion for a Charging Lien as a matter of law or, in the alternative, limit the charging lien to the amount of the attorneys’ fees awarded by the Fee Order. As of the date of this Report, the Chancery Court has not set Skadden’s Motion for an oral hearing, nor has it entered an order on the motion. On January 20, 2023, faced with post-judgment discovery and depositions, Streicher remitted a partial payment towards the Judgment in the amount of $75,000. On February 13, 2023, Streicher made another payment towards the Judgment in the amount of $50,000 and had agreed to make another payment in the amount of $75,000 on February 28, 2023, which it failed to make. The Company intends to fully collect on the Judgment and shall pursue all legal and equitable means to enforce the Judgment against Streicher until the Judgment is fully satisfied. See “Item 1A. Risk Factors - Legal Proceedings Risks - We may not recover amounts owed to us from J. Streicher Financial, LLC” for further information.
Preston Million Class Action
On August 19, 2022, Preston Million filed a Class Action Complaint (the “Class Action Complaint”) against the Company and certain former officers and directors of the Company in the United States District Court for Southern District of New York (the “SDNY”), styled Preston Million, Individually and on Behalf of All Others Similarly Situated vs. Lottery.com, Inc. f/k/a Trident Acquisitions Corp., Anthony DiMatteo, Matthew Clemenson and Ryan Dickinson (Case No. 1:22-cv-07111-JLR). The Class Action Complaint alleged violations by all defendants of Sections 10(b) and 20(a) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 (the “Exchange Act”) 15 U.S.C. §§ 78j(b), 78t(a), as amended by the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 (“PSLRA”), U.S.C. § 78u-4 et seq. (collectively “Federal Securities Laws”). On November 18, 2022, the SNDY ordered the appointment of RTD Bros, LLC, Todd Benn, Tom Benn and Tomasz Rzedian (collectively “Lottery Investor Group”) as lead plaintiff and Glancy Prongay & Murray, LLP as lead counsel for plaintiffs and for the class in the case. On December 5, 2022, the Court stipulated a Scheduling Order in the case. On January 12, 2023, the Company’s legal counsel timely filed its Notice of Appearance. On January 31, 2022, plaintiffs filed their Amended Complaint adding Kathryn Lever, Marat Rosenberg, Vadim Komissarov, Thomas Gallagher, Gennadii Butkevych, Ilya Ponomarev as additional defendants in the case. The Amended Complaint alleges, among other things, that defendants made materially false and misleading statements in violation of Section 10(b),14(a) and 20(a) of the Exchange Act and plaintiffs seek compensatory damages, reasonable costs and expenses including counsel fees and expert fees. Pursuant to the Scheduling Order, the Company filed its motion to dismiss the Amended Complaint on April 3, 2023, under the newly consolidated caption and its proposed order to dismiss the matter. Plaintiffs were expected to file their opposition to the motion to dismiss no later than May 18, 2023, which would trigger the Company’s deadline to file its reply brief in support of their motion to dismiss no later than June 20, 2023. On February 6, 2024, the SDNY granted the Company’s Motion to Dismiss. On June 12, 2024, plaintiffs amended their complaint (the “Third Amended Complaint”). On July 12, 2024, the Company filed its motion to dismiss the Third Amended Complaint (the “MTD Third Amended Complaint”). On August 8, 2024, the plaintiffs filed their response in opposition to the MTD Third Amended Complaint. The Company filed its reply on August 22, 2024 to plaintiffs response in opposition to the MTD Third Amended Complaint.
TinBu Complaint
On March 13, 2023, John Brier, Bin Tu and JBBT, LLC (collectively, the “TinBu Plaintiffs”) filed its original complaint against Lottery.com, Inc. f/k/a AutoLotto, Inc. and its wholly-owned subsidiary TinBu, LLC (“TinBu”) in the Circuit Court of the 13th Judicial District in and for Hillsborough County, Florida (the “TinBu Complaint”). The Complaint alleges breach of contract(s) and misrepresentation with alleged damages in excess of $4.6 million. The parties agreed to extend the Company’s and its subsidiary’s deadline to respond until May 1, 2023. On May 2, 2023, the Company and its subsidiary retained local counsel who filed a Notice of Appearance on behalf of the Company and TinBu and filed a Motion for Enlargement requesting the Court to extend its deadline to file its initial response to the Complaint by an additional 30 days (the “Motion for Enlargement”). As of the date of this Amended Report, the Motion for Enlargement has not been set for a hearing. On May 5, 2023, Plaintiffs filed their Motion for Court Default (“Plaintiffs’ Motion for Default”), despite Company’s Motion for Enlargement. As of the date of this Amended Report, the Motion for Enlargement has not been set for a hearing. The Company intends to oppose Plaintiffs’ Motion for Default. On May 9, 2023, Plaintiffs served Plaintiffs’ First Request for Admissions (the “RFA”) to the Company. On October 13, 2023, the Court granted the Defendants’ Motion to Stay Litigation and Discovery pending a ruling on its Motion to Compel Arbitration. On November 16, 2023, the Court granted Defendants’ Motion to Compel Arbitration in Texas. The parties await a signed written order from the Court to that effect. The TinBu Plaintiffs have appealed the Court’s Order to Compel Arbitration in Texas.
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On July 19, 2024, the Company received notice that the Tinbu Plaintiff’s requested a voluntary dismissal of their claims. The Tinbu Complaints have been voluntarily dismissed without prejudice by the District Court of Appeal of the State of Florida Second District and the Circuit Court of the Thirteenth Judicial Circuit in and for Hillsborough County, Florida, indicating that no further action will be pursued by the plaintiffs in Florida State Court at this time. The District Court of Appeals also denied the Tinbu Plaintiff’s motion for attorney’s fees and costs.
Global Gaming Data
On November 21, 2023, the Company and its wholly owned subsidiary TinBu, LLC (“TinBu”) (Company and TinBu collectively, “Plaintiffs”) filed their First Amended Verified Complaint in Federal Court for the Middle District of Florida (“MDF”) against John J. Brier, Jr. (“Brier”), Bin Tu (“Tu”), and Global Gaming Data, LLC (“GGD”) (collectively, “Defendants”) for violations of the Federal Defend Trade Secrets Act (“DTSA”), the Florida Uniform Trade Secrets Act (“FUTSA”) and the Florida Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act (“FDUTPA”), and for breaches of contract and fiduciary duties, including the duty of loyalty, styled Lottery.com, Inc. f/k/a AutoLotto, Inc. and TinBu, LLC v. John J. Brier, Jr., Bin Tu, and Global Gaming Data, LLC (Case No.: 8:23-cv-2594-KKM-TGW) Defendants filed certain counterclaims against Plaintiffs. The Company’s request for a Temporary Restraining Order was denied by the MDF in February 2024. On June 11, 2024 the MDF denied Plaintiffs’ motion to dismiss. On June 25, 2024, Plaintiffs’ filed its answer to Defendants’ counterclaim(s). On July 10, 2024, the MDF entered a case management and scheduling order with a trial setting for October 2025.
Woodford Eurasia
Woodford Eurasia filed a complaint in the High Court of Justice in London chancery Division. October 16, 2023, The High Court of Justice in London Chancery Division (“the Court”) dismissed an application for injunctive relief initiated by Woodford against the Company. (Case: FL-2023-000023. Woodford Eurasia Assets Limited v Lottery.com Inc.) The Court characterized Woodford’s application as “fundamentally misconceived” and ordered Woodford to pay the Company’s legal costs. Woodford subsequently, on the Judges’ recommendation, withdrew the proceedings.
Woodford filed an additional action in the United States District Court for the District of Delaware on February 14, 2024 in Case No. 23-1317-GBW. Woodford subsequently filed a Notice of Voluntary Dismissal Without Prejudice, which stated that Woodford provides notice of dismissal of all claims without prejudice against Defendants Lotttery.com and its directors.
With the dismissal of this lawsuit by Woodford, no further action is required by Lottery.com or its directors at this time. The Company is determining its next course of action in resolving any further matters regarding Woodford.
The validity and application of the Woodford Loan Agreement Amendment is disputed by the Company.
Despite requests from the Company, Woodford has repeatedly amongst other things: failed to prove the amounts borrowed by the Company or claimed to have been advanced by Woodford to the Company; failed to indicate if it would accept accelerated payment of those verified amounts; failed to provide an anti-money laundering acceptable account to which payment could be made by the Company and failed to explain failure to respond to requests for other funding to be accepted in the context of the Woodford Loan Agreement; failed to respond to requests for funding under the accordion facility of the Woodford Loan Agreement; and failed to respond to allegations of money laundering and conspiracy to defraud the Company and the matter has been referred to the Company’s legal counsel.
McTurk
On June 10, 2024, the Company and Matthew McGahan (“McGahan”) (Company and McGahan collectively, “Defendants”) filed their Notice of Removal and No Answer Motion to Dismiss a state court complaint filed by Sharon A. McTurk (“McTurk”), Rutherford Enterprises, LLC (“Rutherford”), SJB Solutions, LLC (“SJB”) and Astra Supply Chain, LLC (“Astra”) McTurk, Rutherford, SJB and Astra (collectively, “Defendants”) alleging fraudulent and negligent misrepresentation, aiding and abetting, and conspiracy against Defendants. On July 2, 2024, McGahan filed his Motion to Dismiss for Lack of Personal Jurisdiction and Defendants filed their Motion to Dismiss for Failure to State a Claim and Supporting Memorandum of Law (“Motions to Dismiss”). On July 19, 2024, Plaintiffs filed their response to the Motions to Dismiss. Defendants filed their reply on August 29, 2024 to Plaintiffs response to Defendants’ Motions to Dismiss.
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Failure to perform under agreements regarding our Platform or our Data Services, affiliate agreements, or other contracts that we are party to may result in litigation, substantial monetary liquidated damages and contract termination, which would materially and adversely affect our business, financial condition and results of operations.
Our business may subject us to contractual penalties and risks of litigation, including due to potential allegations that we have not fully performed under contracts. Agreements with lottery authorities under which lottery tickets are sold as a retail vendor typically permit a lottery authority to terminate the contract at any time for material failure to perform, other specified reasons and, in many cases, for no reason at all. These contracts also frequently contain exacting implementation schedules and performance requirements and the failure to meet these schedules and requirements may result in monetary liquidated damages, as well as possible contract termination. Additionally, we are party to agreements that may include monetary liquidated damages provisions in the event of our material default thereunder. Material amounts of liquidated damages could be imposed on us in the future, which could, if imposed, have a material adverse effect on our results of operations, business or financial condition.
We may not recover amounts owed to us from J. Streicher Financial, LLC.
On July 29, 2022, the Company filed an original Verified Complaint for Breach of Contract and Specific Performance (the “Complaint”) against J. Streicher Financial, LLC (“Streicher”) in the Court of Chancery of the State of Delaware (the “Chancery Court”). In its Complaint, the Company alleged that Streicher breached a contract entered into by the parties on March 9, 2022, and demanded that Streicher return $16,500,000 it owes to the Company. On September 26, 2022, the Chancery Court entered an order in favor of the Company, Granting with Modifications Company’s Motion for Partial Summary Judgment in the amount of $16,500,000 (the “Judgment”). On October 27, 2022, the Chancery Court further awarded the Company $397,036.94 in attorney’s fees (the “Fee Order”). On November 15, 2022, the Company initiated efforts against Streicher to seek collections on the Judgment and Fee Order. The Company subsequently engaged a collection firm to pursue Streicher as a judgment debtor on behalf of Company. Since being engaged, the collection firm has sought collections on Streicher by noticing Judgment-Debtor for Deposition by Oral Examination in Aid of Judgment and seeking post-judgment discovery, including interrogatories and requests for production.
In an effort to avoid post-judgment discovery, Streicher indicated a willingness to pay the judgment over time with interest and is attempting to negotiate a settlement and forbearance agreement with the Company. Streicher’s original deadline to produce documents and respond to the post-judgment discovery was January 16, 2023, and the Deposition was scheduled to take place on January 19, 2023. On January 20, 2023, faced with post-judgment discovery and depositions, Streicher remitted a partial payment towards the Judgment in the amount of $75,000. On February 13, 2023, Streicher made another payment towards the Judgment in the amount of $50,000 and agreed to make another payment in the amount of $75,000 on February 28, 2023. Streicher failed to remit the payment on February 28, 2023, and as a result, the Company is proceeding with the post-judgment discovery and depositions, which was scheduled for March 16, 2023, however Streicher did not appear at such hearing. The Company intends to fully collect on the Judgment and intends to pursue all legal and equitable means to enforce the Judgment against Streicher until the Judgment is fully satisfied.
We may never collect the full amount of the judgment, the costs of collecting the judgment, including additional legal fees may be material, and Streicher may not have funds to pay us amounts due or may seek bankruptcy protection.
Public Company Operating Risks
Our projections are subject to significant risks, assumptions, estimates and uncertainties, including assumptions regarding future legislation and changes in regulations, both inside and outside of the U.S. As a result, our projected revenues, market share, expenses and profitability may differ materially from our expectations.
The gaming and lottery industry is subject to rapid change, significant competition, and multiple regulatory oversight and our projections are subject to the risks and assumptions made by management with respect to our industries. Operating results are difficult to forecast because they generally depend on our assessment of the timing of adoption of future legislation and regulations by different states, which are uncertain. Furthermore, if we invest in the development of new products, services or distribution channels that do not achieve significant commercial success, whether because of implementation, competition or otherwise, we may not recover the often substantial “up front” costs of developing and marketing those products and distribution channels or recover the opportunity cost of diverting management and financial resources away from other services, products or distribution channels.
Additionally, our business may be affected by reductions in consumer spending from time to time as a result of a number of factors which may be difficult to predict. This may result in decreased revenue levels, and we may be unable to adopt measures in a timely manner to compensate for any unexpected shortfall in income. This inability could cause our operating results in a given quarter to be higher or lower than expected. If actual results differ from our estimates, analysts may react negatively, and our stock price could be materially impacted.
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The requirements of being a public company may strain our resources and divert management’s attention, and the increases in legal, accounting and compliance expenses may be greater than we anticipate.
As a result of being a public company we incur significant legal, accounting and other expenses that we did not incur as a private company. We are subject to the reporting requirements of the Exchange Act, and are required to comply with the applicable requirements of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act and the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, as well as the rules and regulations subsequently implemented by the SEC and the listing standards of The Nasdaq Stock Market LLC (“Nasdaq”), including changes in corporate governance practices and the establishment and maintenance of effective disclosure and financial controls. Compliance with these rules and regulations can be burdensome. Moreover, these rules and regulations have increased our legal and financial compliance costs and have made some activities more time-consuming and costly as compared to when we were a private company. In particular, we have incurred and expect to continue to incur significant expenses and devote substantial management effort toward ensuring compliance with all these requirements, including Section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, which will increase when we are no longer an “emerging growth company.” To meet these various requirements, we have and will continue to need to hire additional legal, accounting and financial staff or contractors, all with appropriate public company experience. Internally, we must continue to increase our technical accounting knowledge as well as maintain an internal audit function, which will increase our operating expenses. Moreover, we could incur additional compensation costs in the event that we decide to pay cash compensation closer to that of other public companies, which would increase our general and administrative expenses and could materially and adversely affect our profitability. We cannot predict or estimate the amount of additional costs we may incur or the timing of such costs.
Risks Relating to Our Charter Documents and Delaware Law
Our Charter includes certain redemption rights which may negatively affect the value our common stock and other securities or result in the redemption of shares of common stock or other securities held by certain holders.
Our Second Amended and Restated Certificate of Incorporation (our “Charter”) provides that any shares of capital stock, bonds, notes, convertible debentures, options, warrants or other instruments that represent a share of equity of the Company, a debt owed by the Company or the right to acquire any of the foregoing (for purposes of this section, the “Redeemable Securities”), owned or controlled by a record or beneficial holder of the Company’s Redeemable Securities or an affiliate thereof who or that (i) fails or refuses to participate in good faith in an investigative process of, or submit documents, give notices or make filings requested or required by, any Regulatory Authority (as such term is defined in the Charter), (ii) is denied or disqualified by any regulatory authority from receiving or holding any Regulatory Approval (as such term is defined in the Charter)), (iii) is determined by a regulatory authority or by the Board, based on advice of counsel or verifiable information received from any Regulatory Authority, to be disqualified or unsuitable to own or control any Redeemable Securities or to be associated or affiliated in any capacity with the Company, its affiliates, or the business and activities of the Company and its affiliates in any Applicable Jurisdiction (as such term is defined in the Charter), (iv) causes the Company or any of its affiliates to lose or to be threatened with the loss of any Regulatory Approval, or (v) is deemed likely by the Board, based on advice of counsel or verifiable information received from any Regulatory Authority, by virtue of such holder’s ownership or control of Redeemable Securities or association or affiliation with the Company or its affiliates, to jeopardize, impede, impair or adversely affect the ability of the Company’s or any of its affiliates to obtain, maintain, hold, use or retain any Regulatory Approval or to cause or result in the suspension, disapproval, termination, non-renewal or loss of any Regulatory Approval (each of such holders or an affiliate of such holder, a “Disqualified Holder”) shall be subject to redemption by the Company (as described in the Charter) as and to the extent required by a Regulatory Authority or deemed necessary or advisable by the Company’s Board.
If a Regulatory Authority requires the Company, or the Board deems it necessary or advisable, to cause any such Redeemable Securities be subject to redemption, we will deliver a redemption notice (as described in the Charter) to the Disqualified Holder or its affiliate(s) (as applicable) and shall purchase the number and type of Redeemable Securities specified in the redemption notice for the redemption price, as defined and determined in accordance with the Charter and set forth in the redemption notice.
Commencing on the date that a regulatory authority serves notice of a determination of disqualification or unsuitability of a holder of Redeemable Securities, or the Board otherwise determines that a person is a Disqualified Holder, and until the Redeemable Securities owned or controlled by such person are owned or controlled by a person who is not a Disqualified Holder, the Disqualified Holder and any affiliates of such Disqualified Holder shall not be entitled to: (i) exercise, directly or indirectly, any voting rights conferred by such Redeemable Securities or otherwise participate in the management of the business or affairs of the Company or our affiliates; (ii) receive any dividends or share of distribution of profits or cash or any other property of, or payments upon dissolution of, the Company or our affiliates, other than payment for the redemption of the Redeemable Securities as described in the Charter; or (iii) receive any remuneration in any form from the Company or any of our affiliates, for services rendered or otherwise.
No redemption of Redeemable Securities shall be effectuated pursuant to the Charter without the receipt of the regulatory approvals required. From and after the redemption date, the Redeemable Securities shall no longer be deemed outstanding, such Disqualified Holder shall cease to be a stockholder with respect to such Redeemable Securities and all rights of such Disqualified Holder (other than the right to receive the redemption price) shall cease.
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The existence of the redemption rights set forth in our Charter may result in the value of the Redeemable Securities being less than they would without the existence of such rights, may prevent the sale or transfer of such Redeemable Securities, and may result in a holder of Redeemable Securities receiving less value for such Redeemable Securities upon the redemption thereof as they would, had such Redeemable Securities not been redeemed.
A court may find that part or all of the provisions included in our Charter pertaining to the redemption right with respect to capital stock held by any stockholders who are deemed to be “disqualified” or “unsuitable” holders is not enforceable, either in general or as to a particular fact situation.
Under the laws of the State of Delaware, our jurisdiction of incorporation, a corporation may provide in its certificate of incorporation for the number of securities that may be owned by any person or group of persons for the purpose of maintaining any statutory or regulatory advantage or complying with any statutory or regulatory requirements under applicable law. Delaware law provides that ownership limitations with respect to shares of our stock issued prior to the effectiveness of our Charter will be effective against (i) stockholders with respect to shares that were voted in favor of the proposed provision; and (ii) purported transferees of shares that were voted for the proposed provision if (a) the transfer restrictions are conspicuously noted on the certificate(s) representing such shares, or (b) the transferee had actual knowledge of the transfer restrictions (even absent such conspicuous notation). The shares of common stock, par value $0.001 per share issued after the effective date of our Charter were issued with the ownership limitation conspicuously noted on the certificate(s) representing such shares and therefore under Delaware law such newly issued shares will be subject to the transfer restriction. We have also disclosed such restrictions to persons holding our stock in uncertificated form.
We cannot assure you that the provision pertaining to the redemption right with respect to capital stock held by any stockholders who are deemed to be “disqualified” or “unsuitable” holders is enforceable under all circumstances, particularly against stockholders who did not vote in favor of the proposed provision, who do not have notice of the ownership limitations at the time they subsequently acquire their shares, or who acquire shares that were owned, at the time of the vote on the provision, by a stockholder (or stockholders) who did not vote such shares in favor of the proposed provision. Accordingly, we cannot assure you that we would be able to redeem the shares of a stockholder deemed an unsuitable person by applicable regulatory authorities.
Claims for indemnification by our directors and officers may reduce our available funds to satisfy successful third-party claims against us and may reduce the amount of money available to us.
Our Charter and our amended and restated bylaws (the “Bylaws”) provide that we will indemnify our directors and officers, in each case to the fullest extent permitted by Delaware law. In addition, as permitted by Section 145 of the Delaware General Corporation Law (the “DGCL”), our Charter, Bylaws and our indemnification agreements that we have entered into with our directors and officers provide that:
● | To the fullest extent permitted under the DGCL, our directors will not be personally liable to the Company or its stockholders for monetary damages for breach of fiduciary duty as a director. |
● | We will indemnify our directors and officers for serving us in those capacities or for serving other business entities at our request, to the fullest extent permitted by the DGCL. The DGCL provides that a corporation may indemnify such person if such person acted in good faith and in a manner such person reasonably believed to be in or not opposed to the best interests of the corporation and, with respect to any criminal action or proceeding, had no reasonable cause to believe such person’s conduct was unlawful. |
● | We may, in our discretion, indemnify employees and agents in those circumstances where indemnification is permitted by applicable law and such person was made a party to an action, suit or proceeding, by reason of the fact that he or she is or was an employee or agent of the Company. |
● | We are required to advance expenses, as incurred, to our directors and officers in connection with defending a proceeding, except that such directors or officers shall undertake to repay such advances if it is ultimately determined that such person is not entitled to indemnification. |
● | We will not be obligated pursuant to the indemnification agreements entered into with our directors and executive officers to indemnify a person with respect to proceedings initiated by that person, except with respect to proceedings to enforce an indemnitees right to indemnification or advancement of expenses, proceedings authorized by our board of directors and if offered by us in our sole discretion. |
● | The rights conferred in our Charter are not exclusive, and we are authorized to enter into indemnification agreements with our directors, officers, employees and agents and to obtain insurance to indemnify such persons. |
● | We may not retroactively amend our Charter or indemnification agreement provisions to reduce our indemnification obligations to directors, officers, employees and agents. |
As a result of these provisions, if an investor were able to enforce an action against our directors or officers, in all likelihood, we would be required to pay any expenses they incurred in defending the lawsuit and any judgment or settlement they otherwise would be required to pay. This could lead to us incurring substantial expenditures to cover the cost of settlement or damage awards against our directors and officers, which the Company may not be able to pay or recoup. Accordingly, our indemnification obligations could divert needed financial resources and may adversely affect our business, financial condition, results of operations and cash flows, and adversely affect the value of our business.
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The exclusive forum provision in our Charter may have the effect of discouraging lawsuits against our directors and officers.
Our Charter requires, unless we consent in writing to the selection of an alternative forum, that (i) any derivative action or proceeding brought on our behalf; (ii) any action asserting a claim of breach of a fiduciary duty owed by any director, officer, other employee to us or to our stockholders; (iii) any action asserting a claim against us, our directors, officers or employees arising pursuant to any provision of the Delaware General Corporation Law (the “DGCL”), our Charter or our Amended and Restated Bylaws (our “Bylaws”); or (iv) any action asserting a claim against us, our directors, officers or employees governed by the internal affairs doctrine under Delaware law shall be brought, to the fullest extent permitted by law, solely and exclusively in the Court of Chancery in the State of Delaware.
In addition, our Charter requires, unless we consent in writing to the selection of an alternative forum, that the federal district courts of the United States of America shall, to the fullest extent permitted by law, be the exclusive forum for the resolution of any complaint asserting a cause of action arising under the Securities Act. Notwithstanding the foregoing, this provision in the Charter does not apply to claims seeking to enforce any liability or duty created by the Exchange Act since Section 27 of the Exchange Act creates exclusive federal jurisdiction over all suits brought to enforce any duty or liability created by the Exchange Act or the rules and regulations thereunder.
Although we believe this provision benefits us by providing increased consistency in the application of law in the types of lawsuits to which it applies, a court may determine that this provision is unenforceable, and to the extent it is enforceable, the provision may have the effect of discouraging lawsuits against our directors and officers.
Anti-takeover provisions contained in our Charter and Bylaws, as well as provisions of Delaware law, could impair a takeover attempt.
Our Charter contains provisions that may discourage unsolicited takeover proposals that stockholders may consider to be in their best interests. The Company is subject to anti-takeover provisions under Delaware law which could delay or prevent a change of control. These provisions are intended to avoid costly takeover battles, reduce our vulnerability to a hostile change of control and enhance the ability of our Board to maximize stockholder value in connection with any unsolicited offer to acquire us. However, these provisions may make more difficult the removal of management, may have an anti-takeover effect and may delay, deter or prevent a merger or acquisition of us by means of a tender offer, a proxy contest or other takeover attempt that a stockholder might consider in its best interest, including those attempts that might result in a premium over the prevailing market price for our securities. These provisions provide for, among other things:
● | authorized but unissued shares of common stock and preferred stock, which may be used for a variety of corporate finance transactions, acquisitions and employee benefit plans and the existence of which could make more difficult or discourage an attempt to obtain control of the Company by means of a proxy contest, tender offer, merger or otherwise (the DGCL does not require stockholder approval for any issuance of authorized shares); |
● | stockholder action may not be by written consent (the DGCL provides that unless otherwise provided in the charter, any action of a meeting of stockholders may be taken without a meeting and prior notice by signed written consent of stockholders having the minimum number of votes that would be necessary to take such action at a meeting at which all shares entitled to vote thereon were present and voted); |
● | amendment of certain provisions of the organizational documents only by the affirmative vote of at least 66 2/3% of the voting power of the outstanding capital stock (the DGCL provides generally that the affirmative vote of a majority of the outstanding shares entitled to vote thereon, voting together as a single class, is required to amend a corporation’s certificate of incorporation, unless the certificate of incorporation requires a greater percentage); |
● | provisions providing for a board of directors with staggered terms and detailing that the number of directors may be fixed and modified only by our Board; |
● | advance notice for nominations of directors by stockholders and for stockholders to include matters to be considered at annual meetings, which may discourage or deter a potential acquirer from conducting a solicitation of proxies to elect the acquirer’s own slate of directors or otherwise attempting to obtain control of Lottery.com; and |
● | the ability of our Board to issue one or more series of preferred stock. |
● | providing that directors may be removed only for cause and then only by a two-thirds vote of the holders of a majority of the voting power of the outstanding shares then entitled to vote in an election of directors, voting together as a single class; |
● | providing that vacancies on our Board, including newly-created directorships, may be filled only by a majority vote of directors then in office; and |
● | prohibiting stockholders from calling special meetings of stockholders. |
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In addition, these provisions may make it difficult and expensive for a third party to pursue a tender offer, change in control or takeover attempt that is opposed by our management or our Board. Stockholders who might desire to participate in these types of transactions may not have an opportunity to do so, even if the transaction is favorable to them. These anti-takeover provisions could substantially impede any stockholder’s ability to benefit from a change in control or change our management and Board and, as a result, may adversely affect the market price of common stock and the ability for any stockholder to realize any potential change of control premium.
Risks Related to Our Common Stock and Warrants
Although we are currently in full compliance with the continued listing standards of Nasdaq, we may not be able to remain in full compliance with Nasdaq’s continued listing standards in the future.
Our common stock and warrants trade on The Nasdaq Global Market under the symbols “LTRY” and “LTRYW,” respectively. Our failure to remain in full compliance with these requirements may result in our securities being delisted from Nasdaq.
On August 17, 2022, the Company received a notice from Nasdaq indicating that, as a result of not having timely filed the Company’s Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the quarter ended June 30, 2022 with the SEC, the Company was not in compliance with Nasdaq Listing Rule 5250(c)(1), which requires timely filing of all required periodic financial reports with the SEC. On November 28, 2022, the Company received an additional notice, dated November 16, 2022, from Nasdaq indicating that, as a result of an additional delinquency in the timely filing of the Company’s Form 10-Q for the quarter ended September 30, 2022, the Company remained out of compliance with Nasdaq Listing Rule 5250(c)(1)
On August 24, 2022, the Staff notified the Company that the bid price of its common stock had closed at less than $1 per share over the previous 30 consecutive business days, and, as a result, did not comply with Nasdaq Listing Rule 5550(a)(2). Therefore, in accordance with Nasdaq Listing Rule 5810(c)(3) (A), the Company was provided 180 calendar days, or until February 20, 2023, to regain compliance with such rule. On February 23, 2023, the Company received a determination letter from Nasdaq advising it that Nasdaq had determined that the Company had not regained compliance with such rule and that the Company was not eligible for a second 180 day period as the Company had not yet filed its periodic reports with the SEC. Nasdaq also confirmed to the Company in its February 23, 2023 letter that the failure to timely file those periodic reports each serve as separate and an individual basis for delisting.
The Company had until March 2, 2023 to request an appeal of Nasdaq’s determination, which appeal was timely requested. If the appeal were not granted, then, the Company’s common stock and warrants would be delisted from Nasdaq, trading of the Company’s securities would be suspended, and a Form 25-NSE would need to be filed with the SEC which would remove the Company’s securities from listing and registration on Nasdaq.
On April 4, 2023, the Company received an additional notice from Nasdaq that the Company’s failure to timely file its Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2022, serves as an additional basis for delisting the Company’s securities from Nasdaq.
On April 24, 2023, the Company presented a plan to a Nasdaq hearing panel (the “Panel”) to regain compliance with the Nasdaq Listing Rules and to file the Company’s deficient quarterly reports for the quarters ended June 30, 2022 and September 30, 2022, as well as its annual report for the year ended December 31, 2022, and to cure the bid price deficiency. On May 8, 2023, the Company received notice that the Company’s plan to regain compliance was conditionally accepted by the Panel and the Company provided Nasdaq with certain requested information. On May 24, 2023, the Company received a letter from the Panel (the “May 24th Decision”), stating that as a result of its review of the requested information, it had determined to delist the Company’s common stock and warrants from Nasdaq on May 26, 2023, and consequently the Company’s common stock and warrants were suspended from trading on Nasdaq on that date. The Company responded to the May 24th Decision and requested that the Panel reconsider the historic facts underlying its decision, the Company’s future prospects, the consequences of such delisting on the Company’s stockholders and the Company’s ability to continue to relaunch its business.
On May 31, 2023, the Panel requested additional information from the Company in order to conduct its reconsideration of the matter. Specifically, the Panel requested the Company’s projected cash flow for the next 12 months, the amount of anticipated drawdowns from the Company’s Loan Agreement with Woodford, and a breakdown of the Company’s revenue earned since it recommenced lottery ticket sales in April 2023. On June 2, 2023, the Company submitted a written response to the Panel’s May 31st request.
Upon consideration of the record and the additional documentation provided by the Company, on June 8, 2023, the Company received a letter (the June 8th Decision”) from the hearings panel stating that it had determined to reverse its initial delisting decision and grant the Company’s request for an exception to the continued listing rules until August 17, 2023, subject to the satisfaction of certain conditions, which the Company met in a timely manner.
In addition to the above, there are other requirements to be met in order to maintain a continued listing on The Nasdaq Global Market. These requirements include requiring that the Company maintain at least $10 million in stockholders’ equity, $5 million of Market Value of Publicly Held Shares (MVPHS) listed securities and having a majority of independent directors.
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As reported on form 8-K filed on December 7, 2023, on November 29, 2023, the Company received a letter from Nasdaq stating that based upon its review of the Company’s Market Value of Publicly Held Shares (“MVPHS”) for the last 30 consecutive business days, the Company no longer met the minimum requirement of $5,000,000 in MVPHS set forth in Nasdaq Listing Rule 5450(b)(1)(C). However, under the Listing Rules, the Company was provided a 180-calendar day grace period to regain compliance, through May 28, 2024.
If at any time during the compliance period the Company’s MVPHS closed at $5,000,000 or more for a minimum of ten consecutive business days, Nasdaq would provide written confirmation of compliance and the matter would be closed. The Company met this requirement, notified Nasdaq and on April 10, 2024 received written notification from Nasdaq confirming that the Company has regained compliance with Nasdaq Listing Rule 5450(b)(1)(C) and the matter is now closed.
Furthermore, the requirement that we maintain a majority of independent directors and at least three members on our audit committee are Nasdaq requirements that we currently meet but have not met from time to time.
If the Company’s securities are delisted from Nasdaq, it could be more difficult to buy and sell the Company’s common stock and warrants or to obtain accurate quotations, and the price of the Company’s common stock and warrants could suffer a material decline. Delisting could also impair the Company’s ability to raise capital or trigger defaults and penalties under its outstanding agreements or securities. Further, even if we regained compliance with Nasdaq listing requirements, there is no guarantee that we would be able to maintain our listing for any period of time.
Delisting from Nasdaq could also result in negative publicity. Further, if we are delisted, we would also incur additional costs under state blue sky laws in connection with any sales of our securities. These requirements could severely limit the market liquidity of our common stock or warrants and the ability of our stockholders to sell our common stock or warrants in the secondary market. If our common stock or warrants are delisted by Nasdaq, our common stock or warrants may be eligible to trade on an over-the-counter quotation system, such as the OTCQB Market, where an investor may find it more difficult to sell our stock or obtain accurate quotations as to the market value of our common stock or warrants. In the event our common stock or warrants are delisted from The Nasdaq Global Market, we may not be able to list our common stock or warrants on another national securities exchange or obtain quotation on an over-the counter quotation system.
An active trading market for our common stock and warrants may never develop or be sustained, which may make it difficult to sell the shares of common stock and warrants.
An active trading market for the common stock and warrants may not develop or continue or, if developed, may not be sustained, which would make it difficult for you to sell your shares of common stock and warrants at an attractive price or at all. The market price of our common stock and warrants may decline below your purchase price, and you may not be able to sell your shares of common stock and warrants at or above the price you paid for such shares or warrants or at all.
The market price of our common stock and warrants could be highly volatile, and you may lose some or all of your investment.
The market price of our common stock and warrants could be highly volatile and may be subject to wide fluctuations in response to a variety of factors, including the following:
● | announcements by us or our competitors of new products, features, or services; |
● | the public’s reaction to our press releases, other public announcements, and filings with the SEC; |
● | rumors and market speculation involving us or other companies in our industry; |
● | actual or anticipated changes in our results of operations or fluctuations in our results of operations; |
● | changes in the financial projections we may provide to the public or our failure to meet these projections; |
● | actual or anticipated developments in our business, our competitors’ businesses or the competitive landscape generally; |
● | actual or perceived privacy or data security incidents; |
● | risks related to the organic and inorganic growth of our business and the timing of expected business milestones, including those related to announced or completed acquisitions of businesses, products, services, or technologies by us or our competitors; |
● | actual or anticipated changes in applicable laws or regulations; |
● | changes in accounting standards, policies, guidelines, interpretations, or principles; |
● | our ability to forecast or report accurate financial results; and |
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● | technical factors in the public trading market for our common stock and warrants that may produce price movements that may or may not comport with macro, industry or company-specific fundamentals, including, without limitation, the sentiment of retail investors (including as may be expressed on financial trading and other social media sites), the amount and status of short interest in our securities, access to margin debt, trading in options and other derivatives on our common stock and warrants and any related hedging and other technical trading factors. |
In addition, the stock markets historically have experienced extreme price and volume fluctuations that have affected the market prices of equity securities of many publicly-held companies. These fluctuations have often been unrelated or disproportionate to the operating performance of those companies. Broad market and industry factors, as well as general economic, political, regulatory and market conditions, may negatively affect the market price of our common stock and warrants, regardless of a company’s actual operating performance. In addition, in the past, securities class action litigation has often been brought against a company following a decline in the market price of its securities. If the Company faces such litigation, it could result in substantial costs and a diversion of management’s attention and resources, which could harm its business, results of operations, cash flow, or financial condition.
If securities or industry analysts do not publish research or reports about the Company, or publish negative reports, the Company’s stock price and trading volume could decline.
The trading market for our common stock and warrants will depend, in part, on the research and reports that securities or industry analysts publish about the Company. The Company does not have any control over these analysts. If the Company’s financial performance fails to meet analyst estimates or one or more of the analysts who cover the Company downgrade its common stock or change their opinion, the Company’s stock price would likely decline. If one or more of these analysts cease coverage of the Company or fail to regularly publish reports on the Company, it could lose visibility in the financial markets, which could cause the Company’s stock price or trading volume to decline.
Because the Company does not anticipate paying any cash dividends in the foreseeable future, capital appreciation, if any, would be your sole source of gain.
The Company currently anticipates that it will retain future earnings for the development, operation and expansion of its business and does not anticipate declaring or paying any cash dividends for the foreseeable future.
As a result, capital appreciation, if any, of the Company’s shares of common stock would be your sole source of gain on an investment in such shares for the foreseeable future.
Risks Related to Our Loan Agreements and Loan Agreement Warrants
United Capital Investments London Limited, (“UCIL”) may not loan us the amounts they agreed to under their amended and restated loan agreements. If UCIL fails to provide us with funding, we may be forced to curtail or even abandon our plan to recommence our operations and we may need to permanently cease our operations.
As previously noted, we need to raise capital to, among other things, support and restart our operations, re-hire employees and pay our expenses. The amended and restated loan agreement with UCIL is a potential source of this needed additional capital.
Pursuant to the Woodford Amended and Restated Loan Agreement, Woodford agreed to fund up to $52.5 million, subject to certain conditions and requirements, of which, per our books and records, $798,351 was received by us through June 30, 2024.
As reported on form 8-K on August 1, 2023, the Company reported that it had not received the requisite funding on a timely basis that it expected from Woodford, despite making several requests to Woodford for said funding under the Woodford Amended and Restated Loan Agreement. Moreover, the Board of Directors determined that it was in the best interest of the Company and its stockholders to enter into a new loan agreement with UCIL, as an alternative lender to Woodford, upon receiving an event of default notice on July 21, 2023 (the “Default Notice”) and an event of default and crystallization notice on July 25, 2023 (the “Crystallization Notice”) from Woodford under the Woodford Amended and Restated Loan Agreement. On July 24, 2023, the Company responded to the Default Notice disputing that an event of default had occurred. Further, on July 27, 2023, the Company replied to the Crystallization Notice denying that an event of default occurred or continued, and further asserted that Woodford’s attempt for crystallization was inappropriate and unlawful under its loan agreement. The validity and application of the Woodford Amended and Restated Loan Agreement and of notices issued under both agreements is disputed by the Company and the matter is being handled by the Company’s legal counsel which is pursuing various remedies in the UK court system to wind down any connections to Woodford.
Despite requests from the Company, Woodford has repeatedly amongst other things: failed to prove the amounts borrowed by the Company or claimed to have been advanced by Woodford to the Company; failed to indicate if it would accept accelerated payment of those verified amounts; failed to provide an anti-money laundering acceptable account to which payment could be made by the Company and failed to explain failure to respond to requests for other funding to be accepted in the context of the Woodford Loan Agreement; failed to respond to requests for funding under the accordion facility of the Woodford Loan Agreement; and failed to respond to allegations of money laundering and conspiracy to defraud the Company and others.
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Given the uncertainty of continued financing under the Woodford Loan Agreement, on July 26, 2023, the Company secured and formalized alternative funding by entering into a Loan Agreement with UCIL which was further amended and restated on August 18, 2023. The UCIL agreement was approved by the shareholders on or about November 17, 2023 and attached to this 10-K/A as an exhibit.
The UCIL loan agreement provides for a credit facility (the “Credit Facility”) consisting of (a) funding in the principal amount of up to $1,000,000 to be paid in tranches over time and as requested by the Company (the “Initial Loan”), wherein in return for the Initial Loan the Company shall issue to UCIL a number of warrants (the “Warrants”) to purchase shares of the Company’s common stock (“common stock”) in an amount representing at least 4.5% but not exceeding 15% of the Company’s issued and outstanding common stock on the date of such issuance; and (b) an additional credit facility, at the Company’s written request and at UCIL’s sole discretion for an amount up to a total of $149,000,000 in additional financing (the “Accordion”) in subsequent funding tranches. The interest rate on the Initial Loan and the Accordion is 10% per annum. The Credit Facility provides that UCIL may elect, in its sole discretion, to convert an amount of the Initial Loan and the Accordion, together with accrued interest, into shares of common stock at a conversion price calculated in accordance with the terms of the Loan Agreement. In addition, the Credit Facility includes certain customary representations, warranties and events of default subject to customary notice and cure rights.
If UCIL nor any other potential lenders or investors are able or willing over time to advance us amounts owed under either of their amended and restated loan agreements or we are unable to raise additional funds from other third parties, we may not be able to raise enough capital to recommence our operations and run our business. Consequently, we may be forced to curtail or even abandon our plan to recommence our operations and we may need to permanently cease our operations.
We are subject to certain covenants while amounts are outstanding under the loan agreements which may restrict our ability to undertake future activities, including issuing additional shares of common stock.
Each loan agreement includes confidentiality obligations, representations, warranties, covenants, and events of default, which are customary for transactions of their size and nature. For example, included in the certain loan agreements may be covenants prohibiting us from (a) making any loan in excess of $1 million or obtaining any loan in amount exceeding $1 million without the consent of certain lenders, which may not be unreasonably withheld; (b) selling more than $1 million in assets; (c) maintaining less than enough assets to perform our obligations under the Loan Agreement; (d) encumbering any assets, except in the normal course of business, and not in an amount to exceed $1 million; (e) amending or restating our governing documents; (f) declaring or paying any dividend; (g) issuing any shares of common stock which negatively affects the lender and (h) repurchasing any shares of common stock. Such covenants in certain loan agreements may restrict our ability to raise capital, pay consultants, officers and directors, and may ultimately result in material adverse effects to the Company. The result of that may be a decrease in the value of our securities or our need to seek bankruptcy protection. The validity and application of the of certain loan agreements and any notices issued under certain loan agreements may be disputed by the Company and could be referred to the Company’s legal counsel which may pursue pursuing all rights and remedies available to the Company in law or equity.
Our obligations under the loan agreements are secured by a first priority security interest in substantially all of our assets and if we were to default, they could force us to curtail or abandon our business plans and operations.
Although, the amounts borrowed or advanced pursuant to the terms of the Woodford Loan Agreement are secured by substantially all of the present and subsequently acquired assets of the Company and its subsidiaries, the validity and application of the Woodford Loan Agreement Amendment is disputed by the Company. Under the Agreement, Woodford as a creditor, in the event of the occurrence of a default might have been able to enforce security interests over our assets or our subsidiaries which secure obligations, take control of such assets and operations, force us to seek bankruptcy protection, or force us to curtail or abandon our current business plans and operations. If that were to happen, any investment in the Company (including, but not limited to, any investment in our common stock) could become worthless. The validity and application of the Woodford Amended and Restated Loan Agreement and of notices issued under both agreements is disputed by the Company and the matter is being handled by the Company’s legal counsel which is pursuing various remedies in the UK court system to wind down any connections to Woodford.
Despite requests from the Company, Woodford has repeatedly amongst other things: failed to prove the amounts borrowed by the Company or claimed to have been advanced by Woodford to the Company; failed to indicate if it would accept accelerated payment of those verified amounts; failed to provide an anti-money laundering acceptable account to which payment could be made by the Company and failed to explain failure to respond to requests for other funding to be accepted in the context of the Woodford Loan Agreement; failed to respond to requests for funding under the accordion facility of the Woodford Loan Agreement; and failed to respond to allegations of money laundering and conspiracy to defraud the Company and others.
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The issuance and sale of common stock upon conversion of the amounts owed or upon exercise of the warrants issued to either Woodford or UCIL under each’s loan agreement may depress the market price of our common stock and cause substantial dilution.
As of December 31, 2023, per the Company’s books and records, we had borrowed $798,351 under the Loan Agreement to Woodford and $697,642 from UCIL. Amounts borrowed can be repaid at any time without penalty and accrue interest per the terms and conditions of each loan agreement. Amounts borrowed may, at each lender’s option, be converted into shares of common stock, beginning 60 days after the first loan date at the rate of 80% of the lowest publicly available price per share of common stock within 10 business days of the date of the Loan Agreement (which was equal to $5.60 per share).
In addition, in connection with the loan agreements we agreed to grant warrants to each of Woodford and UCIL to purchase up to 15% of the shares of common stock that were then issued and outstanding, each with an exercise price equal to the average of the closing price for each of the ten days prior to the drawing of the first tranche. In the event we fail to repay the amounts borrowed when due or either lender fails to convert the amount owed into shares of common stock, the exercise price of the warrants may be offset by amounts owed, and in such case, the exercise price of the warrants will be subject to a further discount.
If sequential conversions of amounts owed under either loan agreement or warrants are exercised, and sales of such resulting shares of common stock take place, the price of our common stock may decline, and as a result, the lender will be entitled to receive an increasing number of shares of common stock, which shares could then be sold in the market, triggering further price declines and conversions or exercises for even larger numbers of shares, to the detriment of our investors. The shares of common stock issued may, under certain conditions, be sold without restriction pursuant to Rule 144. As a result, the sale of these shares may adversely affect the market price, if any, of our common stock.
Additionally, the issuance of common stock upon conversion of the amounts owed under either loan agreement or the exercise of warrants will result in immediate and substantial dilution to the interests of other stockholders.
An amendment of the Loan Agreement with Woodford (the “Loan Agreement Amendment”) entered into on June 12, 2023, by the Company provides that Woodford shall henceforth be able to convert, in whole or in part, the outstanding balance of its loan into the conversion shares at a conversion price that represents a further 25% discount to the original conversion price of 20%. The validity and application of the Woodford Amended and Restated Loan Agreement and of notices issued under both agreements is disputed by the Company and the matter is being handled by the Company’s legal counsel which is pursuing various remedies in the UK court system to wind down any connections to Woodford.
We currently owe a significant amount of money under our Loan Agreements which we may not be able to repay.
As of the date of this prospectus per our books and records, we owe approximately: $798,351 under the Amended and Restated Woodford Loan Agreement; $14,783 under the Amended and Restated UCIL Loan Agreement; and $942,500 under certain convertible notes for investors placed by Univest. Currently, we do not have sufficient funds to repay such amounts. A high level of indebtedness increases the risk that we may default on our debt obligations. If the amounts owed under any undisputed loan agreements are not converted into common stock pursuant to the terms and conditions, we may not be able to pay the principal or interest on the loan, and future working capital, borrowings or equity financing may not be available to pay or refinance such debt. If we do not have sufficient funds and are otherwise unable to arrange financing or raise additional funds, we may have to sell significant assets or have a portion of our assets foreclosed upon which could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition and results of operations and could cause any investment in the Company to decline in value or become worthless.
General Risk Factors
Our insurance coverage is not adequate to cover all possible losses that we could suffer, and our insurance costs may increase.
We currently do not have effective director and officer liability insurance and may not have the financial resources or otherwise be able to obtain director and officer liability insurance at reasonable cost or terms in the future. However, we have other insurance policies with coverage features and insured limits that we believe are customary in their breadth and scope. Nevertheless, in the event of a substantial loss, the insurance coverage we carry may not be sufficient to pay the full market value or replacement cost of our lost investment or could result in certain losses being totally uninsured. Market forces beyond our control may limit the scope of the insurance coverage we can obtain in the future or our ability to obtain coverage at reasonable rates. Certain catastrophic losses may be uninsurable or too expensive to justify obtaining insurance. As a result, if we suffer such a catastrophic loss, we may not be successful in obtaining future insurance without increases in cost or decreases in coverage levels.
Nevertheless, the Company has applied for and expects to receive current quotations for D&O, E&O, Cyber Risk and other applicable insurance coverage and intends to utilize a portion of the funds from this offering to bind and activate such insurance coverage as soon as reasonably practicable after receipt of funds.
Our cash and cash equivalents may be exposed to failure of our banking institutions.
Since we seek to minimize our exposure to third-party losses of our cash and cash equivalents, we hold our cash balances in more than one financial institution. Notwithstanding such allocation, we are subject to the risk of bank failure and the consequent loss of our funds, in whole or in part. If any bank at which we hold deposits were to experience a failure, we could experience the risk of loss, or limitation on access to, our cash and cash equivalents which would adversely affect our business.
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CAUTIONARY NOTE REGARDING FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS
This prospectus contains forward-looking statements, including statements about the financial condition, results of operations, earnings outlook and prospects of Lottery.com. Forward-looking statements appear in a number of places in this prospectus, including, without limitation, in the sections entitled “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations” and “Business.” In addition, any statements that refer to projections, forecasts or other characterizations of future events or circumstances, including any underlying assumptions, are forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are typically identified by words such as “plan,” “believe,” “expect,” “anticipate,” “intend,” “outlook,” “estimate,” “forecast,” “project,” “continue,” “could,” “may,” “might,” “possible,” “potential,” “predict,” “should,” “would” and other similar words and expressions, but the absence of these words does not mean that a statement is not forward-looking.
The forward-looking statements are based on the current expectations of the management of Lottery.com and are inherently subject to uncertainties and changes in circumstances and their potential effects and speak only as of the date of such statement. There can be no assurance that future developments will be those that have been anticipated. These forward-looking statements involve a number of risks, uncertainties or other assumptions that may cause actual results or performance to be materially different from those expressed or implied by these forward-looking statements. These risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, those factors discussed and identified in public filings made with the SEC by Lottery.com and the following:
● | Our inability to compete with other forms of entertainment for consumers’ discretionary time and income; | |
● | Our inability to attract and retain users; | |
● | Our inability to successfully acquire and integrate new operations; | |
● | Our inability to profitably expand into new markets; | |
● | changes in applicable laws or regulations; | |
● | the failure of third-party service providers to perform services and protect intellectual property rights required for the operation of our business; | |
● | limited liquidity and trading of our securities; | |
● | geopolitical risk and changes in applicable laws or regulations; | |
● | the possibility that Lottery.com may be adversely affected by other economic, business, or competitive factors; | |
● | operational risk; | |
● | the risk that the COVID-19 pandemic, and local, state, and federal responses to addressing the pandemic may have an adverse effect on our business operations, as well as our financial condition and results of operations; | |
● | other factors detailed under the section entitled “Risk Factors.” |
The risks described under the heading “Risk Factors” are not exhaustive. Other sections of this prospectus describe additional factors that could adversely affect the business, financial condition or results of operations of Lottery.com. New risk factors emerge from time to time and it is not possible to predict all such risk factors, nor can we assess the impact of all such risk factors on our business, or the extent to which any factor or combination of factors may cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in any forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are not guarantees of performance. You should not put undue reliance on these statements, which speak only as of the date hereof. All forward-looking statements attributable to Lottery.com or persons acting on their behalf are expressly qualified in their entirety by the foregoing cautionary statements. Lottery.com undertakes no obligations to update or revise publicly any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required by law.
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THE OFFERING
We are registering: (1) the issuance by us of up to 50,000,000 shares of the Company’s common stock, par value $0.001 per share (“common stock”) at an offering price of $3.00 per share. This prospectus also relates to the offer and resale from time to time by the selling shareholders named herein (the “Selling Shareholders”), or their permitted transferees, of: (a) shares of common stock consisting of (i) 396,789 shares issuable upon conversion of certain convertible notes which were issued pursuant to private placements conducted in 2023 and 2024, (ii) 463,937 shares of common stock issuable upon exercise of the Private Placement Warrants; and (b) 5,110,128 held by certain officers, directors, employees and consultants of the Company. The private placements were conducted through Convertible Promissory Notes convertible at a maximum conversion price of $4.5875. If the Conversion Price on the six (6) month anniversary of the Issuance Date is lower than the Conversion Price on the Issuance Date, then the Conversion Price shall be adjusted downward to the VWAP of the Common Stock for the five (5) consecutive Trading Days immediately preceding the six (6) month anniversary date. The Conversion Price is subject in each case, to adjustment as provided herein.
Any investment in the securities offered hereby is speculative and involves a high degree of risk. You should carefully consider the information set forth under “Risk Factors” beginning on page 5 of this prospectus.
Issuance of Common Stock | ||
Shares of Common Stock | 50,000,000 shares of common stock at a price of $3.00 per share | |
Use of proceeds |
We will receive up to an aggregate of approximately $150,000,000 from the issuance of the securities. We intend to use the net proceeds for our operations, acquisitions, product development, working capital and general corporate purposes including various forms of applicable insurance coverage. | |
Resale of shares of Common Stock | ||
Shares of Common Stock offered by the Selling Shareholders | 5,970,854 shares upon full conversion of convertible notes, and exercise of warrants, including 5,110,128 shares of Common Stock currently outstanding held by officers, directors, employees and consultants. | |
Use of proceeds | Other than possibly in connection with the exercise of warrants, we will not receive any of the proceeds from the sale of the shares of Common Stock by the Selling Shareholders. | |
Ticker Symbol | Our shares of Common Stock and public warrants are listed on Nasdaq under the symbol “LTRY” and “LTRYW.” |
(1) The number of shares of Common Stock issued and outstanding of Lottery.com Inc. is 9,970,941 as of September 3, 2024.
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USE OF PROCEEDS
Our offering of $150,000,000 in our securities is being made on a best-efforts basis: as if a sale of common stock, the offering price per share would be $3.00. The table below depicts how we plan to utilize the proceeds in the event that 25%, 50%, 75% and 100% of the securities in this offering are sold; however, the amounts actually expended for working capital as well as other purposes may vary significantly and will depend on a number of factors, including the amount of our future revenues and the other factors described under “Risk Factors.” Accordingly, we will retain broad discretion in the allocation of proceeds of this Offering.
Number of Shares sold | 25% | 50% | 75% | 100% | ||||||||||||
Gross proceeds from this Offering (1) | $ | 37,500,000 | $ | 75,000,000 | $ | 112,500,000 | $ | 150,000,000 | ||||||||
Underwriting discounts and commissions (2) | $ | 2,625,000 | $ | 5,250,000 | $ | 7,875,000 | $ | 10,500,000 | ||||||||
Other offering costs and listing fees (3) | $ | 375,000 | $ | 750,000 | $ | 1,125,000 | $ | 1,500,000 | ||||||||
Net proceeds from this Offering (4) | $ | 34,500,000 | $ | 69,000,000 | $ | 103,500,000 | $ | 138,000,000 | ||||||||
Operations | $ | 12,765,000 | $ | 25,530,000 | $ | 38,295,000 | $ | 51,060,000 | ||||||||
Acquisitions (5) | $ | 3,500,000 | $ | 8,500,000 | $ | 12,750,000 | $ | 18,000,000 | ||||||||
Product Development (6) | $ | 5,625,000 | $ | 11,250,000 | $ | 16,875,000 | $ | 22,500,000 | ||||||||
General & Administrative (7) | $ | 9,660,000 | $ | 17,250,000 | $ | 25,875,000 | $ | 34,500,000 | ||||||||
Additional General Working Capital | $ | 2,950,000 | $ | 6,470,000 | $ | 9,705,000 | $ | 11,940,000 |
1. | Expenditures estimated for the 24 months following the completion of this offering. The expenditures are categorized by significant area of activity. The Company will hire more employees and consultants and scale up its operations based on the amount of funds it receives from this offering. |
2. | Consists of potential broker-dealer commissions of 7% of the offering proceeds. |
3. | Although not currently anticipated to be incurred, consists of other potential costs of 1% of the offering proceeds. |
4. | At 25% of the expected amount of securities to be sold, Net Proceeds would not completely cover a full 24 months of expenditures, however, the company expects that revenue generation would be sufficient to cover the potential shortfall. At 50% or more, Net Proceeds will be sufficient to cover or exceed 24 months of expenditures. The Company reserves the right to reallocate the use of proceeds at its discretion. |
5. | Consideration for acquisitions is anticipated to be heavily weighted toward stock vs cash. Amounts here represent the expected cash required to complete acquisitions or to cover cash flow of acquirees before they achieve cash flow break-even. |
6. | Due to the uncertainties inherent in product development it is difficult to estimate with certainty the exact amounts of the net proceeds from this offering that may be used for the for product development under the company’s “buy and build” approach described elsewhere in this prospectus. |
6. | The company has applied and received quotations for D&O, E&O, Cyber Risk, and other applicable insurance coverage and intends to |
7. | utilize part of the proceeds from this offering to bind and activate such insurance coverage as soon as reasonably possible upon receipt of funding from this offering. |
DIVIDEND POLICY
We have never paid dividends on our Common Shares. We currently intend to retain all available funds and any future earnings to support operations and to finance the growth and development of our business. As such, we do not intend to declare or pay cash dividends on our Common Shares in the foreseeable future. Any future determination to pay dividends will be made at the discretion of our Board of Directors subject to applicable laws and will depend upon, among other factors, our earnings, operating results, financial condition and current and anticipated cash needs. Our future ability to pay cash dividends on our Common Shares may be limited by the terms of any then-outstanding debt or preferred securities.
CAPITALIZATION
The following table sets forth our cash and cash equivalents and capitalization as of December 31, 2023:
● | on an actual basis | |
● | on a pro forma, as adjusted, basis to give effect to the above and the issuance of Common Shares in this offering at an assumed offering price of $2.50 as set forth in this prospectus |
You should read the following table in conjunction with the sections entitled “Use of Proceeds”, “Selected Consolidated Financial Information and Operating Data” and “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations”, and our financial statements and the related notes thereto included elsewhere in this Prospectus.
As of June 30, 2024 | ||||||||
Actual | Pro Forma as adjusted (1) | |||||||
(unaudited) | ||||||||
Cash and cash equivalents | $ | 27,952 | 138,027,952 | |||||
Shareholders’ equity: | ||||||||
Common shares, par value $0.001 per share; 7,446,972 shares issued and outstanding as of June 30, 2024 and 59,970,941 on an adjusted basis, respectively | $ | 7,447 | 59,971 | |||||
Preferred stock, par value $0.001 per share; no shares issued and outstanding on actual basis and adjusted basis, respectively. | - | - | ||||||
Additional paid in capital | 277,489,875 | 415,429,904 | ||||||
Accumulated other comprehensive loss | $ | (51,595 | ) | (51,595 | ) | |||
Accumulated deficit | $ | (246,784,505 | ) | (246,784,505 | ) | |||
Total shareholders’ equity | $ | 30,661,222 | 168,653,775 | |||||
Total capitalization | $ | 32,693,292 | 170,685,845 |
The number of shares of common stock to be outstanding after the offering is based on shares outstanding on June 30, 2024 plus 2,523,969 shares issued between June 30, 2024 and the date of this prospectus plus 50,000,000 additional shares resulting from this offering.
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DILUTION
Purchasers of the Common Shares in this offering will experience immediate and substantial dilution to the extent of the difference between the public offering price per Common Share paid by the purchasers of the Common Shares in this offering and the pro forma, as adjusted net tangible book value per Common Share immediately after, and giving effect to, this offering. Dilution results from the fact that the public offering price per Common Share in this offering is substantially in excess of the net tangible book value per Common Share attributable to our existing shareholders for our presently outstanding Common Shares.
Our historical net tangible book value per Common Share is determined by dividing our net tangible book value, which is the book value of our total tangible assets less the book value of our total liabilities, by the number of outstanding Common Shares. As of June 30, 2024, the historical net tangible book value of our Common Shares was $6,239,729 or $0.84 per Common Share.
After giving effect to the (i) sale by us of 50,000,000 shares of Common Shares in this offering at a public offering price of $3.00 per Common Share, and (ii) receipt by us of the net proceeds of this offering, after deduction of the underwriting discounts and commissions and the estimated offering expenses payable by us, our pro forma, as adjusted net tangible book value as of June 30, 2024 would have been $144,239,729, or $2.43 per Common Share. The difference between the public offering price per Common Share and the pro forma, net tangible book value per Common Share represents an immediate decrease in net tangible book value of $0.57 per Common Share to our existing shareholders, and an immediate dilution in net tangible book value of $0.17 per Common Share to purchasers of Common Shares in this offering.
The following table illustrates, this dilution to purchasers in this offering on a per Common Share basis:
Assumed public offering price per share | $ | 3.00 | ||
Net tangible book value per share on June 30, 2024 | $ | 0.84 | ||
Increase in net tangible book value per share to the existing stockholders attributable to this offering | $ | 1.59 | ||
Adjusted net tangible book value per share after this offering | $ | 2.43 | ||
Dilution in net tangible book value per share to new investors | $ | 0.57 |
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SELECTED HISTORICAL CONSOLIDATED FINANCIAL DATA AND OPERATING DATA
The following table presents our selected historical consolidated financial data for the periods indicated. The selected historical consolidated financial data for the six months ended June 30, 2024 and the years ended December 31, 2023 and December 31, 2022 are derived from our reviewed and audited financial statements, respectively.
Historical results are included for illustrative and informational purposes only and are not necessarily indicative of results we expect in future periods, and results of interim periods are not necessarily indicative of results for the entire year. The data presented below should be read in conjunction with, and are qualified in their entirety by reference to, “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations” and our consolidated financial statements and the notes thereto included elsewhere in this Prospectus.
Six Months Ended Year Ended | ||||||||
June 30, 2024 | December 31, 2023 | |||||||
Total revenues | 516,317 | 6,987,474 | ||||||
Total operating expenses | 11,871,483 | 26,488,046 | ||||||
Total other expense | 232,715 | 512,539 | ||||||
Net loss after income taxes | (11,678,299 | ) | (25,537,315 | ) | ||||
Basic and diluted net loss per share | (2.65 | ) | (9.84 | ) | ||||
Balance Sheet Data (at period end) | ||||||||
Cash and cash equivalents | 27,952 | 359,826 | ||||||
Working capital (deficit) | (8,910,307 | ) | (7,449,358 | ) | ||||
Total assets | 62,090,053 | 64,377,218 | ||||||
Total liabilities | 29,396,761 | 27,761,216 | ||||||
Stockholders’ equity | 32,693,292 | 36,616,002 |
Year Ended | ||||||||
December 31, 2023 | December 31, 2022 | |||||||
Total revenues | 6,987,474 | 6,779,057 | ||||||
Total operating expenses | 26,488,046 | 58,342,078 | ||||||
Total other expense | 512,539 | 4,486,130 | ||||||
Net loss after income taxes | (25,537,315 | ) | (59,999,072 | ) | ||||
Basic and diluted net loss per share | (9.84 | ) | (23.79 | ) | ||||
Balance Sheet Data (at period end) | ||||||||
Cash and cash equivalents | 359,826 | 102,766 | ||||||
Working capital (deficit) | (7,449,358 | ) | 2,875,518 | |||||
Total assets | 64,377,218 | 79,380,253 | ||||||
Total liabilities | 27,761,216 | 17,563,768 | ||||||
Stockholders’ equity | 36,616,002 | 61,816,485 |
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As indicated in Note 8 Write-Off of Goodwill and Intangibles, to the Company’s consolidated financial statements, the Company recorded impairments to goodwill and intangible Assets for the year ended December 31, 2023 as follows:
As required by ASC 350 Intangibles – Goodwill and Other Impairment and ASC 360 – Impairment Testing: Long-Lived Assets, in connection with preparing the consolidated financial statements for the period ended December 31, 2023, management conducted a review as to whether there are conditions or circumstances that may indicate the impairment of its long-lived assets, goodwill and other indefinite-lived intangible assets.
The Company reviewed the goodwill and intangibles acquired in the acquisitions of TinBu, LLC and Global Gaming Enterprises, Inc., the domain names and software purchased from third parties, and software developed in-house. Each of TinBu, Global Gaming, and Lottery.com is considered a reporting unit for application of the annual review for potential impairment.
The company performed a valuation of each of the reporting units described above, using discounted cash flow methodologies and estimates of fair market value. Given the results of the quantitative assessment, the company determined that the goodwill for the TinBu and Global Gaming reporting units was impaired. For the year ended December 31, 2023, the company recognized goodwill impairment charges of $5.65 million for the TinBu reporting unit and $1.06 million for the Global Gaming reporting unit. The total impairment charges related to goodwill were $6.71 million. In addition, it was determined that there was an impairment of certain intangible assets related to Global Gaming. For the year ended December 31, 2023, the Company recorded impairment charges of $488 thousand to trade names and trademarks and $312 thousand to technology acquired from Global Gaming. The total impairment charges to intangible assets were $800 thousand.
Additionally, in connection with completion of the tax provision for 2023, a transaction which had been recorded for the year ended December 31, 2021 was reevaluated and a decision was made that it should not have been recorded and should be reversed. Specifically, at the end of 2021, a decision was made to increase goodwill related to the acquisition of Global Gaming Enterprises, Inc. due to an incorrect conclusion that “an adjustment should be made to goodwill for the recording of related deferred tax liabilities as the Company released $1.6 million of valuation allowance since the additional deferred tax liabilities represent a future source of taxable income”. This approach improperly accelerated the effects of future amortization of intangible assets related to Global Gaming, resulting in inappropriately releasing part of a valuation allowance for deferred taxes which is not in compliance with GAAP. At that time, the Company recorded an increase to goodwill for Global Gaming and an income tax benefit each in the amount of $1,653,067. We have reversed this transaction by reducing goodwill for Global Gaming by $1,653,067 and have increased accumulated deficit to remove the income tax benefit which was incorrectly recorded for the year ended December 31, 2021.
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MANAGEMENT’S DISCUSSION AND ANALYSIS OF FINANCIAL CONDITION
AND RESULTS OF OPERATIONS
You should read the following discussion and analysis of our financial condition and results of operations together with the consolidated financial statements and the related notes appearing elsewhere in this prospectus. This discussion contains forward-looking statements that reflect our plans, estimates, and beliefs that involve risks and uncertainties. As a result of many factors, such as those set forth under the “Risk Factors” and “Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements and Risk Factor Summary” sections and elsewhere in this prospectus, our actual results may differ materially from those anticipated in these forward-looking statements.
The following discussion and analysis of our financial condition and results of operations together with the condensed consolidated financial statements and the related notes appearing elsewhere in this Report contains forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties. Our actual results and the timing of events may differ materially from those expressed or implied in such forward-looking statements as a result of various factors, including those set forth in the section entitled “Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements” included herein and the sections entitled “Risk Factors” included in this Report and in our Annual Report on Form 10-K/A for the year ended December 31, 2023 (our “Annual Report”).
Overview
During FY 2023, the Company addressed legacy issues while successfully regaining full compliance with Nasdaq’s continued listing rules and restarting operations in order to stage Lottery.com for growth in FY 2024. The cornerstone of the Company’s operational progress for FY 2024 will be driven by technology, product and service/capability enhancements.
Internal Investigation and Operational Cessation
On July 6, 2022, the Company announced that the Audit Committee (the “Audit Committee”) of the board of directors of the Company (the “Board”) had retained outside counsel to conduct an independent investigation that revealed instances of non-compliance with state and federal laws concerning the states in which lottery tickets were procured as well as order fulfillment. The investigation also identified issues pertaining to the Company’s internal accounting controls (the “Internal Investigation”). Following a report on the filings of the Internal Investigation, on June 30, 2022, the Board terminated the employment of Ryan Dickinson as the Company’s President, Treasurer and Chief Financial Officer, effective July 1, 2022. Subsequently, the Company initiated a review of its cash balances and related disclosures as well as its revenue recognition processes and other internal accounting controls.
On July 20, 2022, Armanino LLP (“Armanino”), the Company’s registered independent public accountant for the fiscal years ended December 31, 2021 and 2020, advised the Company that its audited financial statements for the year ended December 31, 2021 (the “2021 Audit”) and the unaudited financial statements for the quarter ended March 31, 2022 (the “March 2022 Financials”), should no longer be relied upon. Armanino advised that it had determined, subsequent to the 2021 Audit and review of the March 2022 Financials, that the Company had entered into a line of credit in January 2022 that was not disclosed in the footnotes to the 2021 Audit and was not properly recorded in the March 2022 Financials.
On July 28, 2022, the Board determined that the Company did not have sufficient financial resources to fund its operations or pay certain existing obligations, including its payroll and related obligations, due to a significant misstatement of our cash balances.
The following day, on July 29, 2022, the Company effectively ceased operations (the “Operational Cessation”), when it furloughed the majority of its employees and generally suspended its lottery game sales. The Company’s remaining employees were retained at the discretion of the Company’s then Chief Operating Officer and Chief Legal Officer in order to provide the minimal business functions needed to address the Company’s legal and compliance issues and to secure necessary funding to resume the Company’s operations. Less than twenty percent of these non-furloughed employees remain active in the efforts to restore Company operations.
On September 27, 2022, Armanino resigned as the independent registered public accounting firm of the Company, effective immediately and subsequently, on October 7, 2022, the Audit Committee approved the engagement of Yusufali & Associates, LLC, (“Yusufali”) as the Company’s new independent registered public accounting firm.
Since the Operational Cessation, the Company has had minimal day-to-day operations and has primarily focused on restarting certain of its core businesses (as described in more detail under “- Plans for Recommencement of Company Operations” below), and completing and filing the following (i) the restatements of the Company’s 2021 Audit and March 2022 Financials and preparing and filing the Company’s delinquent periodic reports, including Amendment No. 1 to the Company’s Annual Report on Form 10-K/A for the year ended December 31, 2021, which the Company filed on May 10, 2023: (ii) Amendment No. 1 to the Company’s Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q/A for the three months ended March 31, 2022, which the Company filed on May 15, 2023; (iii) the Company’s Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q for the three months ended June 30, 2022 and September 30, 2022, which the Company filed on May 22 and 24, 2023, respectively; (iv) the Company’s Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2022, the Company’s Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the three months ended March 31, 2023; (vi) the Company’s Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the three months ended June 30, 2023; (vii) the Company’s Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the three months ended September 30, 2023; Amendment No. 1 to the Company’s Annual Report on Form 10-K/A for the year ended December 31, 2023; and (vii) Amendment No. 1 to the company’s quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the three months ended March 31, 2024 and June 30, 2024.
Nasdaq Listing
On March 23, 2023, the Company requested a hearing before the Nasdaq Hearings Panel (the “Panel”) to appeal a determination by the Listing Qualifications department (the “Staff”) of Nasdaq dated February 23, 2023, to delist the Company’s securities from Nasdaq. At the hearing before the Panel on April 24, 2023, the Company presented its plan to complete the restatement of its financial statements for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2021, and the subsequent quarter ended March 31, 2022, and to file the amended periodic reports and all subsequent required filings with the SEC. The Company requested the continued listing of its securities on Nasdaq pending the completion of its compliance plan.
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By letter dated May 8, 2023, the Panel granted the Company’s request for continued listing, on an interim basis, subject to the Company submitting financial projections for fiscal 2023 and filing the restated financial statements for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2021, and quarter ended March 31, 2022, with the SEC by May 15, 2023. The Company satisfied these conditions and the Panel indicated that it would review the filings, along with the updated projections, and thereafter determine whether to afford the Company additional time to complete the compliance plan presented at the hearing.
By letter dated May 24, 2023, the Panel notified the Company that it had determined to suspend trading and otherwise move to delist the Company’s securities from Nasdaq effective with the open of the market on May 26, 2023. The Company’s securities were suspended from trading on that date, but the securities were not delisted because the Company thereafter requested that the Panel reconsider its determination to delist the Company’s securities from Nasdaq based upon what the Company believed to be mistakes of material fact upon which the Panel had based its decision.
On June 8, 2023, the Panel notified the Company that it had determined to reverse its prior decision and grant the Company’s request for continued listing subject to the Company’s timely compliance with a number of conditions ultimately expiring on August 17, 2023, on which date the Company must have satisfied all applicable criteria for continued listing on Nasdaq (the “June 8th Decision”). As a result of the foregoing, the suspension from trading ceased and the Company’s securities were reinstated for trading on Nasdaq effective with the open of the market on June 15, 2023. See “Risk Factors - Risks Related to Our Common Stock and Warrants – We are currently in full compliance with the continued listing standards of Nasdaq. However, we may not be able to remain in full compliance with Nasdaq’s continued listing standards in the future” for more information.
As reported on form 8-K filed on December 7, 2023, on November 29, 2023, the Company received a letter from Nasdaq stating that based upon its review of the Company’s Market Value of Publicly Held Shares (“MVPHS”) for the last 30 consecutive business days, the Company no longer met the minimum requirement of $5,000,000 set forth in Nasdaq Listing Rule 5450(b)(1)(C). However, under the Listing Rules, the Company was provided a 180-calendar day grace period to regain compliance, through May 28, 2024.
If at any time during the compliance period the Company’s MVPHS closed at $5,000,000 or more for a minimum of ten consecutive business days, Nasdaq would provide written confirmation of compliance, and the matter would be closed. The company received such notification from Nasdaq on April 10, 2024 and the matter was closed.
Furthermore, the requirement that we maintain a majority of independent directors and at least three members on our audit committee are Nasdaq requirements that we currently meet but have not met from time to time.
If the Company’s securities are delisted from Nasdaq, it could be more difficult to buy and sell the Company’s common stock and warrants or to obtain accurate quotations, and the price of the Company’s common stock and warrants could suffer a material decline. Delisting could also impair the Company’s ability to raise capital and/or trigger defaults and penalties under its outstanding agreements or securities. Further, even if we lose and are able to regain compliance with Nasdaq listing requirements, there is no guarantee that we will be able to maintain our listing for any period of time.
Delisting from Nasdaq could also result in negative publicity. Further, if we are delisted, we would also incur additional costs under state blue sky laws in connection with any sales of our securities. These requirements could severely limit the market liquidity of our common stock and/or warrants and the ability of our stockholders to sell our common stock and/or warrants in the secondary market. If our common stock and/or warrants are delisted by Nasdaq, our common stock and/or warrants may be eligible to trade on an over-the-counter quotation system, such as the OTCQB Market, where an investor may find it more difficult to sell our stock or obtain accurate quotations as to the market value of our common stock and/or warrants. In the event our common stock and/or warrants are delisted from The Nasdaq Global Market, we may not be able to list our common stock and/or warrants on another national securities exchange or obtain quotation on an over-the counter quotation system.
AutoLotto $30,000,000 Business Loan
On January 4, 2022, AutoLotto entered into a Business Loan Agreement (the “Business Loan”) with bank prov, pursuant to which the Company borrowed $30,000,000 from bank prov, which was evidenced by a $30,000,000 Promissory Note. The Promissory Note accrued interest at the rate of 2.750% per annum (7.750% upon the occurrence of an event of default) and had a maturity date of January 4, 2024. Monthly interest payments were due under the Promissory Note beginning February 4, 2022. The Promissory Note could be repaid at any time without penalty. The Promissory Note included customary events of default for a debt obligation of the size of the Promissory Note. The Business Loan included representations and warranties of AutoLotto and covenants (both positive and negative) which were customary for a transaction of this nature and size, including rights to set off. Upon the occurrence of an event of default, Provident could declare the entire amount owed immediately due and payable. We were required to pay a 1% commitment fee at the time of our entry into the Business Loan, and another 1% annual loan fee would have been due on the first anniversary thereof.
In accordance with the terms of the Business Loan, upon entering into the agreement, $30,000,000 in a separate account with bank prov was pledged as security for the amount outstanding under the loan (“Collateral Security”). The $30,000,000 Collateral Security became restricted and remained restricted until October 12, 2022, when AutoLotto defaulted on its obligations under the Business Loan and bank prov foreclosed on the $30,000,000 of Collateral Security. The Collateral Security, which was in the form of restricted cash, was presented as a contingent liability on the Company’s balance sheet from March 31, 2022 until the obligation was satisfied in October of 2022. See our consolidated financial statements for additional information.
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Loan Agreement with Woodford
On December 7, 2022, the Company entered into a loan agreement with Woodford Eurasia Assets, Ltd. (“Woodford”), (the “Woodford Loan Agreement”) pursuant to which Woodford agreed to provide the Company with up to $52.5 million, subject to certain conditions and requirements, of which, per the Company’s books and records $798,351 had been received by June 30, 2024 and is owed pursuant to the terms of the Woodford Loan Agreement. Amounts borrowed accrue interest at the rate of 12% per annum (or 22% per annum upon the occurrence of an event of default) and are due within 12 months of the date of each loan advance. Amounts borrowed can be repaid at any time without penalty.
Amounts borrowed pursuant to the Woodford Loan Agreement are convertible, at Woodford’s option, into shares of the Company’s common stock, beginning 60 days after the first loan date at the rate of 80% of the lowest publicly available price per share of common stock within 10 business days of the date of the Loan Agreement (which was equal to $5.60 per share), subject to a 4.99% beneficial ownership limitation and a separate limitation preventing Woodford from holding more than 19.99% of the issued and outstanding common stock of the Company, without the Company obtaining shareholder approval for such issuance.
Conditions to the Woodford Loan Agreement included the resignation of four prior members of the Board (Lisa Borders, Steven M. Cohen, Lawrence Anthony DiMatteo and William Thompson, all of whom resigned from the Board in September 2022), and the appointment of two new independent directors. Subsequent loans under the Woodford Loan Agreement also required the Company to comply with all listing requirements, unless waived by Woodford. The Woodford Loan Agreement also allowed Woodford to nominate another director to the Board of Directors, in the event any independent member of the Board of Directors resigned.
Proceeds of the loans could only be used by to restart the Company’s operations and for general corporate purposes agreed to by Woodford.
The Woodford Loan Agreement included confidentiality obligations, representations, warranties, covenants, and events of default, which are customary for a transaction of this size and nature. Included in the Loan Agreement are covenants prohibiting us from (a) making any loan in excess of $1 million or obtaining any loan in an amount exceeding $1 million without the consent of Woodford, which consent may not be unreasonably withheld; (b) selling more than $1 million in assets; (c) maintaining less than enough assets to perform our obligations under the Loan Agreement; (d) encumbering any assets, except in the normal course of business, and not in an amount to exceed $1 million; (e) amending or restating our governing documents; (f) declaring or paying any dividend; (g) issuing any shares which negatively affects Woodford; and (h) repurchasing any shares.
The Company also agreed to grant warrants to purchase shares of common stock to Woodford (the “Woodford Warrants”) in an amount equal to 15% of the Company’s then issued and outstanding shares of common stock. Each Woodford Warrant has an exercise price equal to the average of the closing price of the Company’s common stock for each of the ten days prior to the first amount being debited from the bank account of Woodford, which equates to an exercise price of $5.60 per share. In the event the Company fails to repay the amounts borrowed when due or Woodford fails to convert the amount owed into shares, the exercise price of the warrants may be offset by amounts owed to Woodford, and in such case, the exercise price of the warrants will be subject to a further 25% discount.
In connection with our entry into the Woodford Loan Agreement, the Company also entered into a Loan Agreement Deed, Debenture Deed and Securitization, with Woodford (the “Security Agreement”), which provides Woodford with a first floating charge security interest over all present and future assets of the Company in order to secure the repayment of amounts owed under the Loan Agreement.
On June 12, 2023, the Company entered into an amendment of the Woodford Loan Agreement (the “Woodford Loan Agreement Amendment”). The Woodford Loan Agreement Amendment provides that Woodford shall henceforth be able to convert, in whole or in part, the outstanding balance of its loan into the conversion shares at a conversion price that represents a further 25% discount to the original conversion price of 20%. The validity and application of the Woodford Loan Agreement Amendment is disputed by the Company.
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Despite requests from the Company, Woodford has repeatedly amongst other things: failed to prove the amounts borrowed by the Company or claimed to have been advanced by Woodford to the Company; failed to indicate if it would accept accelerated payment of those verified amounts; failed to provide an anti-money laundering acceptable account to which payment could be made by the Company and failed to explain failure to respond to requests for other funding to be accepted in the context of the Woodford Loan Agreement; failed to respond to requests for funding under the accordion facility of the Woodford Loan Agreement; and failed to respond to allegations of money laundering and conspiracy to defraud the Company and the matter has been referred to the Company’s legal counsel.
Information regarding ongoing legal proceedings with Woodford can be found in the “Legal Proceedings” section of this form.
Loan Agreement with United Capital Investments London Limited
The Company entered into a credit facility (the “UCIL Credit Facility”), which is represented by a loan agreement, which was initially entered into on July 26, 2023, and was amended and restated on August 8, 2023, and subsequently amended on August 18, 2023 and amended and restated on February 16, 2024, the “UCIL Loan Agreement”). The UCIL Loan Agreement is with United Capital Investments London Limited (“UCIL”), an entity in which each of Matthew McGahan, the Company’s Chief Executive Officer and Chair of the Company’s Board, and Barney Battles, a former member of the Board, have a indirect or direct interest, respectively. The decision by the Company to enter into the UCIL Loan Agreement followed an acknowledgment by the Company that it had not received the requisite funding on a timely basis that it expected from Woodford, despite the Company making several requests to Woodford for said funding under the Woodford Loan Agreement. Moreover, the Board of Directors determined that it was in the best interest of the Company and its stockholders to enter into the UCIL Loan Agreement with UCIL, as an alternative lender to Woodford, upon receiving an event of default notice on July 21, 2023 (the “Default Notice”) and an event of default and crystallization notice on July 25, 2023 (the “Crystallization Notice”) from Woodford under the Woodford Loan Agreement. Neither McGahan or Battles participated in the vote on the UCIL agreement to ensure proper independence and correct corporate governance. On July 24, 2023, the Company responded to the Default Notice disputing that an event of default had occurred given the Company’s earlier announcement that UCIL had agreed to enter into a funding arrangement with the Company. On July 27, 2023, the Company replied to the Crystallization Notice denying that an event of default occurred or continued, and further asserted that Woodford’s attempt for crystallization was inappropriate and unlawful under the Woodford Loan Agreement. Given the uncertainty of the continued financing under the Woodford Loan Agreement, the Board of Directors sought to secure and formalize the Company’s alternative funding by entering into the UCIL Loan Agreement.
Investors Placed by Univest Securities, LLC
As reported on form 8-K filed with the SEC on February 6, 2024, on December 6, 2023, Univest Securities, LLC ( “Univest”), agreed to act as placement agent in connection with the Company’s offering (“Offering”) of convertible debt at a Conversion Price of 125% of the closing price on the day prior to the Issuance Date (date of funding) with warrant coverage at 50% up to $1,000,000; including convertible promissory notes (each, a “Convertible Note” or collectively, the “Convertible Notes”), and common stock purchase warrants (each, a “Warrant”, or collectively, the “Warrants”) to purchase shares of common stock of the Company, par value $0.001 per share (the “Common Stock”) which include specific registration rights (“Registration Rights”), offered directly to one or more investors (each, an “Investor” and, collectively, the “Investors”) through Univest. If the “Conversion Price” on the six (6) month anniversary of the Issuance Date is lower than the Conversion Price on the Issuance Date, then the Conversion Price shall be adjusted downward to the VWAP of the Common Stock for the five (5) consecutive Trading Days immediately preceding the six (6) month anniversary date.
On February 1, 2024, the parties agreed to increase the offering amount from $1,000,000 to $5,000,000. All other terms and conditions of the offering remain the same. The Securities shall be offered and sold pursuant to Section 4(a)(2) under the Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the “Securities Act”).
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Business Combination
On October 29, 2021, we, as AutoLotto, Inc (“AutoLotto”), consummated the Business Combination with Trident Acquisitions Corp. (“TDAC” and after the Business Combination described herein, the “Company”), pursuant to the terms of that certain Business Combination Agreement, dated as of February 21, 2021 (the “Business Combination Agreement”), by and among TDAC, Trident Merger Sub II Corp., a wholly-owned subsidiary of TDAC (“Merger Sub”) and AutoLotto. Pursuant to the terms of the Business Combination Agreement, Merger Sub merged with and into AutoLotto with AutoLotto surviving the merger as a wholly owned subsidiary of TDAC, which was renamed “Lottery.com Inc.” The aggregate value of the consideration paid by TDAC to the holders of AutoLotto common stock in the Business Combination (excluding shares that may be issued to former AutoLotto stockholders (the “Sellers”) as earnout consideration) was approximately $440 million, consisting of approximately 2,000,000 shares of common stock valued at $220.00 per share. In addition, each Seller was eligible to receive its pro rata portion of 150,000 Seller Earnout Shares and each Founder Holder was eligible to receive one-third of 100,000 Founder Holders Earnout Shares, subject to adjustments in the normal course of business. Conditions for the Earnout Shares were not met and all of the potential Earnout Shares were forfeited.
Board of Directors
On April 29, 2024, the Board of Directors of the Company approved the addition of Mr. Warren Macal as a member of the Company’s Board of Directors. Macal’s nomination follows the December 2023 $18 million investment commitment from Prosperity Investment Management subject to due diligence.
On June 17, 2024, Mark Bernard (“Barney”) Battles, a member of the board of directors (the “Board”) of Lottery.com Inc. (the “Company”) notified the Board of his intent to resign from the Board, effective close of business on June 30, 2024, and not stand for re-election to the Board at the annual meeting of stockholders to be held this year (the “2024 Annual Meeting”). Mr. Battles indicated that his decision to resign and not stand for re-election at the 2024 Annual Meeting was due to his decision to take early retirement and was not the result of any disagreement with the Company on any matter, or relating to its operations, policies, or practices. Mr. Battles was originally appointed to the Board following the successful completion of background checks on November 4, 2022, as reported in an 8-K filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on November 10, 2022.
Reverse Stock Split
On August 9, 2023, the Company amended its Charter to implement, effective at 5:30 p.m., Eastern time, a 1-for-20 Reverse Stock Split. At the effective time of the Reverse Stock Split, every 20 shares of common stock either issued and outstanding or held as treasury stock were automatically combined into one issued and outstanding share of common stock, without any change in the par value per share. Stockholders who would have otherwise been entitled to fractional shares of common stock as a result of the Reverse Stock Split received a cash payment in lieu of receiving fractional shares. In addition, as a result of the Reverse Stock Split, proportionate adjustments will be made to the number of shares of common stock underlying the Company’s outstanding equity awards, the number of shares issuable upon the exercise of the Company’s outstanding warrants and the number of shares issuable under the Company’s equity incentive plans and certain existing agreements, as well as the exercise, grant and acquisition prices of such equity awards and warrants, as applicable. The Reverse Stock Split was approved by the Company’s stockholders at the Company’s 2023 Annual Meeting of Stockholders on August 7, 2023 and was subsequently approved by the Board of Directors on August 7, 2023.
The effects of the Reverse Stock Split have been reflected in this Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for all periods presented.
International Expansion
In June 2021, we closed the acquisition of Global Gaming, which holds 80% of the equity of each of Aganar and JuegaLotto. Aganar operates in the licensed Online Lottery market in Mexico and is licensed to sell Mexican National Lottery draw games, instant win tickets, and other games of chance online with access to a federally approved online casino and sportsbook gaming license. JuegaLotto is licensed by Mexico authorities to commercialize international lottery games in Mexico through an authorized gaming portal and to commercialize games of chance in other countries throughout Latin America. As of the date of this Report, according to Statista, the estimated size of the Latin American lottery market is $68 billion with a compound annual growth rate projected at 6.05% through 2028. Furthermore, it is projected that there will be 3,000,000 online lottery players in the South American lottery market alone by 2028. Based on these projections, we believe these acquisitions will provide opportunities for growth of our international operations throughout Mexico and Latin America as we expand our portfolio of products and expose our existing products to new markets.
Operations Prior to Operational Cessation
Prior to the Operational Cessation, the Company was a provider of domestic and international lottery products and services. As an independent third-party lottery game service, we offered a platform that we developed and operated to enable the remote purchase of legally sanctioned lottery games in the U.S. and abroad (the “Platform”). Our revenue generating activities included (i) offering the Platform via our Lottery.com app and our websites to users located in the U.S. and international jurisdictions where the sale of lottery games was legal and our services were enabled for the remote purchase of legally sanctioned lottery games (our “B2C Platform”); (ii) offering an internally developed, created and operated business-to-business application programming interface (“API”) of the Platform, which enabled our commercial partners, in permitted U.S. and international jurisdictions, to purchase certain legally operated lottery games from us and to resell them to users located within their respective jurisdictions (“B2B API”); and (iii) delivering global lottery data, such as winning numbers and results, and subscriptions to data sets of our proprietary, anonymized transaction data pursuant to multi-year contracts to commercial digital subscribers (“Data Service”).
Mobile Lottery Game Platform Services
Both our B2C Platform and our B2B API provided users with the ability to purchase legally sanctioned draw lottery games via a mobile device or computer, securely maintain their acquired lottery game, automatically redeem a winning lottery game, as applicable, and receive support, if required, for the claims and redemption process. Our registration and user interfaces were designed to be easy to use, provide for the creation of an account and purchase of a lottery game with minimum friction and without the creation of a mobile wallet or requirement to pre-load minimum funds and - importantly - to provide instant confirmation of the user’s lottery game numbers, whether selected at random or picked by the user. Users of our B2C Platform services paid a service fee and, in certain non-U.S. jurisdictions, a mark-up on the purchase price. Prior to the Operational Cessation, we generated revenue from this service fee and mark-up. Our B2B API Platform resumed limited operations for the month of April 2023. As of the date of this Prospectus, our B2C Platform is not currently available to the public. We anticipate that our B2C Platform will become available again by fall 2024.
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The WinTogether Platform
Prior to the Operational Cessation, we operated and administered of all sweepstakes offered by WinTogether, a registered 501(c)(3) charitable organization (“WinTogether”), which was formed in April 2020 to support charitable, educational, and scientific causes. In consideration of our operation of the WinTogether platform and administration of the sweepstakes, we received a percentage of the gross donations to a campaign, from which we paid certain dividends and all administration costs.
The WinTogether platform continued operating after the Operational Cessation, until all sweepstakes campaigns were completed, and all prizes awarded. On March 29, 2023, the board of directors of WinTogether voted to suspend its relationship with the Company. The suspension of the relationship was rescinded by the WinTogether board on November 16, 2023.
On April 1, 2024, Lottery.com resumed its sweepstakes offerings through its partnership with the WinTogether.org foundation (DBA: DonateTo.Win). The initial sweepstakes launched under the restored partnership will remain active until at least September 30,2024.
Current Operations
Despite the Operational Cessation, the Company’s subsidiaries have continued to operate under the direction of the leadership teams that were in place prior to the Company’s acquisition of such companies. While the operational activities of these subsidiaries vary, from the Operational Cessation through the date of this Report, each of TinBu, Aganar and JuegaLotto has decreased its expenses and has had its revenue decrease from pre-Operational Cessation levels.
Data Services
In 2018, we acquired TinBu, LLC (“TinBu”), a digital publisher and provider of lottery data results, jackpot results, and other data, as a wholly-owned subsidiary. Through TinBu, our Data Service delivers daily results of over 800 domestic and international lottery games from more than 40 countries, including the U.S., Canada, and the United Kingdom, to over 400 digital publishers and media organizations. See “Item 1A. Risk Factors – We are party to pending litigation and investigations in various jurisdictions and with various plaintiffs and we may be subject to future litigation or investigations in the operation of our business. An adverse outcome in one or more proceedings could adversely affect our business, financial condition, and results of operations” for more information about our relationship with TinBu.
Our technology pulls real time primary source data, and, in some instances, we acquire data from dedicated data feeds from the lottery authorities. Our data is constantly monitored to ensure accuracy and timely delivery. We are not required to obtain licenses or approvals from the lottery authorities to pull this primary source data or to acquire the data from such dedicated feeds. Commercial acquirers of our Data Service pay a subscription for access to the Data Service and, for acquisition of certain large data sets, an additional per record fee.
We additionally enter into multi-year contracts pursuant to which we sell proprietary, anonymized transaction data pursuant to multi-year agreements and in accordance with our Terms of Service in consideration of a fee and in other instances provide the Data Service within a bundle of provided services.
Aganar and JuegaLotto
On June 30, 2021, we acquired 100% of the equity of Global Gaming Enterprises, Inc., a Delaware corporation (“Global Gaming”), which holds 80% of the equity of each of Medios Electronicos y de Comunicacion, S.A.P.I de C.V. (“Aganar”) and JuegaLotto, S.A. de C.V. (“JuegaLotto”). JuegaLotto is federally licensed by the Mexican regulatory authorities with jurisdiction over the ability to commercialize lottery games in Mexico through an authorized federal gaming portal and to commercialize games of chance in other countries throughout Latin America. Aganar has been operating in the licensed Online Lottery market in Mexico since 2007 and has certain rights to sell Mexican National Lottery draw games, instant win tickets, and other games of chance online with access to a federally approved online casino and sportsbook gaming license and additionally issues a proprietary scratch lottery game in Mexico under the brand name Capalli. See “Item 1A. Risk Factors – We need additional capital to, among other things, support and restart our operations, re-hire employees and pay our expenses. Such capital may not be available on commercially acceptable terms, if at all. If we do not receive the additional capital, we may be forced to curtail or abandon our plans to recommence our operations and we may need to permanently cease our operations” for additional information.
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Nook Holdings, LTD
On September 28, 2023, the company entered into Stock Purchase Agreement with the shareholders of Nook Holdings Limited (“Nook”), a private limited company incorporated and registered in the Abu Dhabi Global Market, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates (“UAE”). The total purchase price is approximately $2.314 million. The Company made three payments totaling $137,500 in the fourth quarter of 2023 and anticipates the transaction closing in the fourth quarter of 2024 or as otherwise agreed by the parties. Nook is known for its innovative approach to co-working in Dubai and has procured 200 licenses for individuals and companies in the sports, health and wellness sector seeking access to Dubai and the broader Middle Eastern market. With its exclusive partnership with the Dubai Multi-Commodities Centre Free Zone (DMCC), Nook offers a wide range of services, including business setup support, insurance, VAT registration, and networking opportunities for like-minded sports entrepreneurs. As part of the acquisition, Nook will be rebranded under the Sports.com umbrella.
Sports.com
In December 2021, we finalized the acquisition of the domain name https://sports.com and on November 15, 2022, we formed a wholly-owned subsidiary called Sports.com, Inc., a Texas corporation (“Sports.com”). Subsequently, Sports.com announced a partnership with the Saudi Motorsports Company, which enabled the Company to roll out the Sports.com brand at the FIFA World Cup decider at the end of November 2022. In December 2022, Sports.com signed an agreement with Data Sports Group, GmbH (“DSG”), which provided Sports.com the exclusive North American distribution rights for sports data products offered and maintained by DSG (the “DSG Data”). The DSG Data is being sold through the same sales resources and sales channels as the lottery data offered by TinBu. On July 23, 2023, DSG exercised its right to terminate the exclusive distribution rights due to Sports.com not meeting its contractual obligations.
As reported on form 8-K filed with the SEC on February 9, 2024, on February 5, 2024, the Company entered into a Memorandum of Understanding (the “MOU”) with WA Technology Group Limited (“WATG”), whereby the Company has agreed to pay WATG a total of $500,000 US dollars in restricted common stock at a price of $3.00 per share. A second payment by Lottery.com to WATG shall be due in five years and 2 months from the date of the definitive agreement to be signed by the parties at a later date. The total consideration for the second payment is the equivalent of $500,000 US dollars in restricted common stock at market value on the date the second payment is due. In addition, the Company will nominate an individual (at a later date) from WATG to act as a dedicated consultant to the Company for the purpose of expanding its brand, ticket sales and global operations. In exchange, the Company shall own a non-exclusive perpetual single use license for WATG’s Lottery Player & Account Management Software (“PAM”) and WATG shall provide its full spectrum of iGaming solutions to the Company to manage its global growth strategy. The parties shall co-operate and collaborate with one another’s businesses and shall enter a more definitive agreement at a later date.
As reported on form 8-K filed with the SEC on February 21, 2024, on February 15, 2024, the Company entered into a Memorandum of Understanding (the “MOU”) with S&MI Ltd. (“SportLocker.com”), whereby it agreed to pay the shareholders of S&MI Ltd. a total of $1,000,000 in restricted common stock at a valuation of $3.00 per share. The Necessary documents for completion of the transaction were recently completed and the acquisition will close on September 1, 2024.
The first payment of $150,000 in restricted common stock (50,000 shares) of the Company is due and payable not later than the first business date following the Completion Date. The remaining payments in restricted common stock to the shareholders of S&MI Ltd. by the Company will be made as follows:
(i) a second payment of $212,500 (70,833 shares) due on or before one hundred and twenty-one (121) days following the Closing Date; (ii) a third payment, of $212,500 (70,833 shares) due on or before two hundred and twelve (212) days following the Completion Date; (iii) a fourth payment of $212,500 (70,833 shares) due on or before three hundred and one (301) days following the Closing Date and (vi) a final and fifth payment of $212,500 (70,834 shares) due on or before three hundred and ninety-six (396) days following the Closing Date. The terms and conditions set forth in the MOU shall be incorporated into a definitive agreement to be entered into by the parties with a Closing Date on or before September 1, 2024 or as otherwise agreed to by the parties.
In addition, the Company has agreed to make available to the business of SportLocker.com, cash, media credits or combination thereof over the twelve months following the Closing Date as additional capital investment into the business plan, to facilitate brand awareness, user acquisition and general performance marketing and promotion, influencer and subscription campaigns and branding activities of S&MI’s streaming and social engagement, subject to the Company successfully raising a minimum of new capital.
On March 7, 2024, Sports.com, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Company, announced by press release that it has launched the “Sports.com App”. The App (which is available for download for free from all major app stores) connects sports content with audiences worldwide. By uniting a diverse community of sports enthusiasts across various genres, demographics, and countries, Sports.com plans to eliminate multiple cultural barriers and foster a global sports community.
On March 28, 2024, Sports.com, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Company, announced by press release that it has obtained the rights to live stream the March 31, 2024 heavyweight title fight between Frazier Clarke and Fabio Wardley. The live stream was available to view for free for millions of sports fans in Africa, via the Sports.com website.
The live streaming event is the result of a partnership between Sports.com, BOXXER, the fast-growing UK boxing promotional company, and Sky Sports in the UK and Ireland. Sports.com has entered into an agreement with BOXXER to provide live coverage through the Sports.com platform in Africa, via local telecom partners such as Vodacom, which will provide free access to millions of viewers.
This partnership underscores Sports.com’s commitment to bringing inclusivity, innovation, and entertainment to sports. To view the live streaming event on Sports.com, African-based sports fans were able to sign up via local mobile operators to watch the fight on the Sports.com platform. Sports.com’s strategic intent is to provide more such content to sports fans in underserved markets including those in the Middle East and Africa.
Boca Raton Lease
The employees and executives of “Lottery.com work remotely from home and for the most part are located in different parts of the United States.
On August 01, 2024, the Company entered into a lease agreement for premises in Boca Raton, Florida, The lease has a one year term commencing on August 1, 2024 and ending on July 31, 2025. The monthly rent is $25,000. Utilities and taxes are paid by the lessor. The consideration provided to the lessor as prepayment of the lease is 300,000 restricted shares of common stock which are being registered in this offering.
The Company leased the premises in Boca Raton, Florida (“the Property”) for use as the corporate campus for its US operations. It will be used for meetings with potential investors, partners, acquisition targets and for face to face meetings of corporate officers and key consultants.
Starting in the fourth quarter of 2024, it is anticipated that executives and key contractors will meet and work together for periods of approximately 10 days at a time as the company fully resumes operations, expands Sweepstakes offerings, and closes acquisitions. Additionally, the company has developed a shared services model for cost savings where oversight of certain functions such as finance and accounting, information technology, engineering and development, legal, compliance, and corporate governance, and certain operational processes and procedures are provided centrally for the parent company and its present subsidiaries and future acquisitions. Similarly, the Property will be used for all entities by the applicable executives and key consultants.
Plans for Recommencement of Company Operations
As noted above, since the Operational Cessation, the Company has had minimal day-to-day operations and has primarily focused on restarting certain of its core businesses. The Company has developed a three-phase plan to recommence its operations, which plan is outlined below.
Phase 1 - Relaunch B2B API Platform. During the Operational Cessation, the Company maintained positive relationships with its ticket-printing and courier partners, as well as several distribution partners that have been found to be in compliance with local, state, and federal rules related to ticket procurement and distribution. These partners have implemented the Lottery.com API and have advised the Company that they expect to be ready to offer lottery games to their customers through their sales channels when the Company resumes operations. As such, the Company believes that it has sufficient demand to resume operation of its B2B API platform operations, assuming it is able to maintain the core employee team to manage the lottery ticket fulfillment process and access sufficient capital to expand the launch of Project Nexus, which was designed to, among other things, handle high levels of user traffic and transaction volume, while maintaining expediency, security, and reliability in the administrative and back-office functionality required by the B2B API. Our B2B API Platform resumed limited operations in April 2023. We expect be fully operational during the fourth quarter of 2024.
Phase 2 - Resume B2C Platform Operations. The Company believes that it will be in a position to relaunch its B2C Platform by fall 2024. As of the date of this Report, the Company expects that it will initially relaunch its B2C Platform to customers in Texas for a period of time before rolling it out to other jurisdictions. The Company may elect to accelerate the relaunch of its Platform to customers in another state. The Company plans to limit the rollout in order to give it additional time to properly vet and confirm compliance with local, state and federal rules related to ticket procurement and distribution. For more information, see “Item 1A. Risk Factors - Regulatory and Compliance Risks - A jurisdiction may enact, amend, or reinterpret laws and regulations governing our operations in ways that impair our revenues, cause us to incur additional legal and compliance costs and other operating expenses, or are otherwise not favorable to our existing operations or planned growth, all of which may have a material adverse effect on us or our results of operations, cash flow, or financial condition.” The Company has also maintained various pre-paid media credits that it expects to use to launch and maintain promotional campaigns geared towards encouraging prior customers to return to the Platform and to acquire new customers.
Phase 3 - Restore Other Business Lines and Projects. Assuming the success of Phase 1 and Phase 2, the Company expects to restore other products it previously offered, such as supplying lottery tickets to consumers in approved domestic jurisdictions, partnering with licensed providers in international jurisdictions to supply legitimate domestic lottery games, and reviving other products and services that were under development when the Operational Cessation occurred.
As of the date of this Report, the current estimated cash balance of the Company and subsidiaries is approximately $36,799. The Company believes that this cash on hand, along with future borrowings, will be sufficient for the Company to resume its core operations.
As of the date of this Report, our common stock and warrants are traded on The Nasdaq Stock Market LLC (“Nasdaq”) under the ticker symbols “LTRY” and “LTRYW,” respectively. As of the date of this Report, we are in compliance with Nasdaq’s continued listing requirements (the “Listing Rules”). See, “Risk Factors - Risks Related to Our Common Stock and Warrants – Although we are currently in full compliance with the continued listing standards of Nasdaq, we may not be able to remain in full compliance with Nasdaq’s continued listing standards in the future.” Additionally, under its new management, the Company continues to work to improve its disclosure and reporting controls. Also, the Company plans to continue to strengthen and improve its systems of internal control over financial reporting and invest in additional legal, accounting, and financial resources.
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Even if the Company’s three phase plan to recommence its operations is successful, there can be no assurance that the Company will be able to maintain compliance with the applicable Listing Rules, or that the Nasdaq Panel will continue to stay the delisting of the Company’s securities on Nasdaq. If the Company’s securities are delisted from Nasdaq, it could be more difficult to buy or sell the Company’s common stock and warrants or to obtain accurate quotations, and the price of the Company’s common stock and warrants could suffer a material decline. Delisting could also impair the Company’s ability to raise additional capital needed to fund its operations and/or trigger defaults and penalties under outstanding agreements or securities of the Company.
There can be no assurance that we will have sufficient capital to support our operations and pay expenses, repay our debt, or that additional funds will be available on favorable terms, if at all. We may not be able to restart our operations or generate sufficient funding to support such operations in the future. The Company’s ability to continue its current operations, prepare and refile required reports, and restart its prior operations, is dependent upon obtaining new financing. Future financing options available to the Company include equity financings, debt financings or other capital sources, including collaborations with other companies or other strategic transactions. Equity financings may include sales of common stock. Such financing may not be available on terms favorable to the Company or at all. The terms of any financing may adversely affect the holdings or rights of the Company’s stockholders and may cause significant dilution to existing stockholders. There can be no assurance that the Company will be successful in obtaining sufficient funding on terms acceptable to the Company, if at all, which would have a material adverse effect on its business, financial condition and results of operations, and it could ultimately be forced to discontinue its operations and liquidate. These matters, when considered in the aggregate, raise substantial doubt about the Company’s ability to continue as a going concern for a reasonable period of time, which is defined as within one year after the date that the financial statements are issued. The accompanying financial statements do not contain any adjustments to reflect the possible future effects on the classification of assets or the amounts and classification of liabilities that might result from the outcome of this uncertainty.
Components of Our Results of Operations (Prior to the Operational Cessation)
Our Revenue
Revenue from B2C Platform. Our revenue is the retail value of the acquired lottery game and the service fee charged to the user, which we impose on each lottery game purchased from our B2C Platform. The amount of the service fee is based upon several factors, including the retail value of the lottery game purchased by a user, the number of lottery games purchased by a user, and whether such user is located within the U.S. or internationally. Currently, in the U.S, the minimum service fee is $0.50 for the purchase of a $1 lottery game and $1 for the purchase of a $2 lottery game; the service fee for additional lottery games purchased in the same transaction is 6% of the face value of all lottery games purchased. For example, the service fee for the purchase of five $2 tickets is $1.60, comprised of the $1 base service fee, plus 6% of the aggregate value of the face value of all lottery games purchased. The Company did not operate its B2C platform in 2023.
Internationally, B2C sales in jurisdictions where we do not have direct or indirect authority generate an immaterial amount of revenue, and we are assessing our operations in these jurisdictions. As discussed above, our B2C Platform is not currently operational. We anticipate that our B2C Platform will become operational by fall 2024.
Revenue from B2B API. Together with our third-party commercial partner(s), we agree on the amount of the technology usage fee to be imposed on the sale of each lottery game purchased through the B2B API, if any, together with a service fee to be charged to the user; we receive up to 50% of the net revenues from such technology usage fee and service fee pursuant to our commercial agreement with each commercial partner. As discussed above, following the Operational Cessation, our B2B API Platform resumed limited operations in April 2023.
Data Services. Commercial acquirers of our Data Service pay a subscription for access to the Data Service and, for acquisition of certain large data sets, an additional per record fee. The Company additionally enters into multi-year contracts pursuant to which it sells proprietary, anonymized transaction data pursuant to multi-year agreements and in accordance with our Terms of Service in consideration of a fee. Our Data Services operations were not impacted by the Operational Cessation.
Our Operating Costs and Expenses
Personnel Costs. Personnel costs include salaries, payroll taxes, health insurance, worker’s compensation and other benefits for management and office personnel.
Professional Fees. Professional fees include fees paid for legal and financial advisors, accountants and other professionals related to the Business Combination and other transactions.
General and Administrative. General and administrative expenses include marketing and advertising expenses, office and facilities lease payments, travel expenses, bank fees, software dues and subscriptions, expensed research and development (“R&D”) costs and other fees and expenses.
Depreciation and Amortization. Depreciation and amortization expenses include depreciation and amortization expenses on real property and other assets.
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Key Trends and Factors Affecting Our Results
The following describes the trends associated with our business prior to the Operational Cessation that have impacted, and which we expect will continue to impact, our business and results of operations in a material way:
International operations. We face challenges related to expanding our footprint globally and the related process of obtaining the licenses and regulatory approvals necessary to provide services and products within new and emerging markets. The international jurisdictions where we operate and seek to expand have been subject to increasing foreign currency fluctuations against the U.S. dollar, inflationary pressures and political and economic instability. We expect these trends to continue during fiscal 2024 and believe they are likely to affect consumer spending, which could have a material impact on our revenues. As a result, it may take longer to achieve projected revenue gains or generate cash in any such regions affected or any new foreign jurisdiction into which we expand.
Introduction of a new gaming platform. We developed a proprietary, blockchain-enabled gaming platform, which we named Project Nexus. Project Nexus is designed to handle high levels of user traffic and transaction volume, while maintaining expediency, security, and reliability in (i) the processing of lottery game sales, (ii) fulfillment of retail requirements of the B2C Platform, (iii) the administrative and back-office functionality required by our B2B API, and (iv) the requirements of our claims and redemption process. We expect to utilize this platform to launch new products, including any proprietary products we may introduce. The introduction of new technology like Project Nexus is subject to risks including, among other things, implementation delays, issues successfully integrating the technology into our solutions, or the possibility that the technology does not produce the expected benefits.
Our growth plans and the competitive landscape. Our direct competitors operate in the global entertainment and gaming industries and, like us, seek to expand their product and service offerings with integrated products and solutions. Our short-to-medium term focus is on increasing our penetration in our existing U.S. jurisdictions by increasing direct to consumer marketing campaigns, introducing our B2C Platform into new U.S. and select foreign jurisdictions and acquiring synergistic regulated and sports betting enterprises domestically and abroad.
Competition in the sale of online lottery games has significantly increased in recent years, is currently characterized by intense price-based competition, and is subject to changing technology, shifting needs and frequent introductions of new games, development platforms and services. To maintain our competitive edge alongside other established industry players (many of which have more resources, or capital), we expect to incur greater operating expenses, such as increased marketing expenses, increased compliance expenses, increased personnel and advisory expenses associated with being a public company, additional operational expenses and salaries for personnel to support expected growth, additional expenses associated with our ability to execute on our strategic initiatives including our aim to undertake merger and acquisition activities, as well as additional capital expenditures associated with the ongoing development and further implementation of Project Nexus.
Current Plan of Operations
As of the date of this Report, the Company’s primary revenue drivers are the resumption of its B2B API platform and the launch of Sports.com. It is anticipated that operational costs for the next 12 months through April 30, 2024 will be greater than revenues. It is anticipated that the liquidity gap will be satisfied by equity investment or debt incurred, of which there is no assurance. We anticipate that our B2C Platform will become operational by fall 2024.
Beyond the next 12 months, the Company plans to continue to expand domestic and international operations. Moreover, the Company plans to enhance its mobile application to include pool plays, ticket subscriptions, loyalty programs and various gamification modules.
Results of Operations
Our consolidated financial statements have been prepared assuming that we will continue as a going concern and, accordingly, do not include adjustments relating to the recoverability and realization of assets and classification of liabilities that might be necessary should we be unable to continue in operation. We will require additional capital to meet our long-term operating requirements. We expect to raise additional capital through, among other things, the sale of equity or debt securities.
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Three Months Ended June 30, 2024 Compared to Three Months Ended June 30, 2023
The following table summarizes our results of operations for the three months ended June 30, 2024 and June 30, 2023, respectively.
For the three months Ended June 30, 2024 and 2023
For the three months Ended
June 30,
2024 | 2023 | $ Change | % Change | |||||||||||||
Revenue | $ | 256,997 | $ | 655,344 | (398,347 | ) | -61 | % | ||||||||
Cost of revenue | 45,570 | 95,683 | (50,113 | ) | -52 | % | ||||||||||
Gross profit | 211,427 | 559,661 | (348,234 | ) | 62 | % | ||||||||||
Operating expenses: | ||||||||||||||||
Personnel costs | 1,789,986 | 1,306,007 | 483,979 | 37 | % | |||||||||||
Professional fees | 2,305,847 | 1,112,310 | 1,193,537 | 107 | % | |||||||||||
General and administrative | 674,543 | 964,502 | (289,959 | ) | -30 | % | ||||||||||
Depreciation and amortization | 1,330,745 | 1,392,158 | (61,413 | ) | -4 | % | ||||||||||
Total operating expenses | 6,101,121 | 4,774,977 | 1,326,144 | 22 | % | |||||||||||
Loss from operations | (5,889,694 | ) | $ | (4,215,316 | ) | 1,674,378 | 40 | % | ||||||||