ZEAL Network

The ZEAL Network SE (formerly Tipp24 SE), headquartered in Hamburg, is an e-commerce group of companies that offers lottery products online. The brands of the ZEAL Group include Lotto24 and Tipp24.

1999 to 2009
Tipp24 was founded in 1999 by Jens Schumann and Marc Peters and was funded with venture capital. Since the beginning of 2000, the company has brokered participation in almost all state lottery games via the Internet. At the end of 2001, the break-even point and in 2003 a transaction volume of more than 100 million euros was reached for the first time. From 2004 onwards, cooperations were started with portals and partners such as gmx.de, MSN, Yahoo and web.de. The joint-stock company went public on October 12, 2005. Due to the German Inter-State Gambling Treaty (Glücksspielstaatsvertrag) which came into force on January 1, 2008, Tipp24 had to temporarily cease brokerage activities in Germany as of January 1, 2009 until the legal situation had been clarified. Tipp24 then expanded its business in other European countries.

2009 to 2014
From January 2009 (until October 2019) gaming orders were placed with MyLotto24 Ltd. via the website tipp24.com, which was operated by Tipp24 Services Ltd., based in the United Kingdom. MyLotto24 Ltd. operated an independent private lottery in the UK, and for this purpose, took over the official winning numbers and odds of the official Deutscher Lotto- und Totoblock and thus organized a so-called secondary lottery, legally a bet on the outcome of German Lotto. At the end of 2009, the joint-stock company was converted into a Societas Europaea (SE).

Following the First State Treaty amending the German Inter-State Gambling Treaty (Erster Glücksspieländerungsstaatsvertrag) and a separate Gambling Act in Schleswig-Holstein (Glücksspielgesetz in Schleswig-Holstein), the online brokerage activities with the subsidiary Lotto24 AG (previously Tipp24 Deutschland GmbH) was resumed in January 2012. In July 2012, Lotto24 AG was floated on the stock exchange and separated from Tipp24 SE as part of a spin-off.

On June 28, 2013, the company announced that it would relocate its headquarters from Hamburg to London. Lotto24 focused on Germany, while Tipp24 wanted to focus on the markets in the UK, Spain and the US. The listing on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange was retained. The transfer of the registered office was completed with the entry in the English commercial register on February 7, 2014.

Since 2014
Tipp24 changed its name at the end of 2014 and has been operating under the name ZEAL Network ever since. In June 2017, ZEAL Network SE was removed from the SDAX index (to which the shares have belonged since 2009) due to insufficient market capitalization. They returned to the SDAX in May 2020 and remained there until December 2023. Due to regulatory risks in Germany for secondary lotteries, ZEAL announced the takeover of Lotto24 AG in November 2018. It was completed in May 2019. In September 2019, the decision was made to relocate the company's headquarters from London back to Hamburg. A key factor was the change of the business model: the secondary lottery business was converted into a state-licensed online lottery brokerage business on the basis of the brokerage license held by Lotto24, and the company became a partner of Deutscher Lotto- and Totoblock again.

In 2022, ZEAL Network received the follow-up license for lottery brokerage in Germany for Lotto24 AG, which is valid until 2029. In April 2023, ZEAL Network and its subsidiary Lotto24 received permission to organize virtual slot machine games on the Internet.

Company
The company is managed by a three-member Vorstand (Board of directors), headed by Helmut Becker. The supervisory board consists of six members. The company had 192 employees at the end of 2023. The company has offices in Hamburg, London and Madrid. ZEAL Network has been a member of the World Lottery Association, an international organization that promotes the interests of state-licensed lotteries and related service providers, since 2023.

The company operates on the market with its brands Lotto24, Tipp24, ZEAL Iberia, ZEAL Instant Games, ZEAL Ventures, freiheit+ and Deutsche Traumhauslotterie. The focus of Lotto24 and Tipp24 is on the brokerage of state-organized and own lotteries on the Internet, the main market is Germany. ZEAL Iberia is a partner of ONCE, a public organization for the blind in Spain, which is also known for its lotteries. ZEAL Instant Games is active in the games business, particularly with cooperation partners in the USA and South America. ZEAL Ventures invests in industry-specific start-ups. freiheit+ and Deutsche Traumhauslotterie are charity lotteries in Germany.

According to its own information, the company has 1.2 million customers. The transaction volume amounted to EUR 843 million in 2023 (as of December 2023).