The National Lottery of Benin (LNB) has closed its 2025 fiscal year reporting a sharp 36% decline in net profits year-on-year.
Executive management teams attributed the downturn to an aggressive wave of unlicensed retail slot machines and illegal offshore betting sites expanding across West Africa, alongside the absence of a substantial one-off financial gain that had artificially inflated the state operator’s 2024 results.
Digital Channels Core to LNB Strategy
Total corporate revenue experienced a 4% contraction, sliding down to 98.6 billion West African CFA francs (€150.4 million). Profit margins were further squeezed by a heavy tax bill, with domestic state-aligned tax charges more than doubling over the twelve-month cycle.
Despite these near-term fiscal challenges, LNB highlighted excellent underlying productivity improvements: corporate value added rose by 22%, while the group’s gross operating surplus climbed 34%.
The standout growth vertical remains the online gaming branch, which surged 18% year-on-year to capture a dominant 68% of the lottery’s total revenue stream. Management confirmed that alternative digital channels are now the primary mechanism driving player engagement across Benin and neighboring West African territories, accelerated by skyrocketing smartphone penetration rates and the rapid adoption of localized mobile money services.
Launching a Unified Digital Solution to Fight the Black Market
To counter the expansion of unlicensed operators, the National Lottery of Benin is preparing to roll out a centralized, unified digital platform that will combine its traditional sports betting, casino games, and virtual products into a single interface linked directly with mobile money networks.
Because the informal black market operates outside the local tax system, unlicensed brands frequently offer vastly superior payout ratios and odds compared to state monopolies. The LNB, which has maintained a statutory gaming monopoly in Benin since 2004 and manages roughly 3,000 retail sales points nationwide, intends to leverage this unified digital portal to future-proof its business model.
While its signature Loto 5/90 game remains the primary brick-and-mortar revenue driver, the group expects digital integration to deliver an operational turnaround throughout the remainder of 2026.
