National Lottery MT launched its brand in Malta with Take a Chance, a July 2022 film by Space Studios Ltd blending national pride with lottery entertainment.
ARCHIVEHow National Lottery MT Used Take a Chance to Launch a Truly Maltese Brand
Take a Chance is the brand-launch film created by Space Studios Ltd for National Lottery MT, published in Malta in July 2022 to mark the beginning of a new national lottery operator and position the brand as a genuinely Maltese entertainment and gambling destination combining new games with established lottery classics.
National Lottery plc, a wholly owned subsidiary of IZI Group plc, received the National Lottery licence on 5 July 2022, as reported by izigroup.com, replacing Maltco Lotteries which had operated Malta's national lottery since 2004 according to Instore Lottery Mt. The transition represented far more than a commercial handover. It marked the introduction of an entirely new corporate identity — first unveiled on 25 May 2022, per instore.lottery.mt — and demanded a creative platform capable of earning public trust and generating immediate excitement in a compact, culturally distinct market. Take a Chance was that platform. The campaign's central proposition, framed around the hashtags #takeachance, #nationallottery, #malta, and #lotterymt as promoted on National Lottery MT's X account, invited Maltese audiences to embrace optimism, possibility, and the thrill of participation from the very first draw. The first Lotto draw under the new brand was scheduled for 9 July 2022 at 20:35, according to instore.lottery.mt. By anchoring the launch message in local pride and community identity, National Lottery MT used a single film to establish emotional credibility alongside commercial relevance. The Clapboard Score for Take a Chance is 55 out of 100, reflecting a campaign that fulfils its launch brief with cultural clarity but leaves measurable creative ambition on the table.
ARCHIVENational Lottery MT entered one of Europe's most concentrated gaming jurisdictions. Malta's gaming industry generated gross value added of €1.495 billion in 2022, representing approximately 9.6% of Malta's total GVA, according to Mga Org Mt. The Malta Gaming Authority issued 358 gaming licences at year-end 2022 and recorded 329 B2C game approvals across the same period, also per mga.org.mt, underscoring the density of competition any new operator must navigate even within a small island economy.
The strategic challenge for National Lottery MT was not simply competitive differentiation from international online operators — many of which hold MGA licences and serve Maltese players through global platforms — but differentiation from institutional memory. Maltco Lotteries had operated Malta's national lottery for eighteen years before the licence transfer, as documented by instore.lottery.mt, meaning the incoming brand needed to earn loyalty from an audience accustomed to an entirely different identity. Competing operators in Malta's broader gambling landscape, including internationally licensed iGaming brands clustered on the island and traditional retail-betting providers, further complicated brand salience. Take a Chance addressed this directly by positioning National Lottery MT not as a generic gambling product but as a cultural institution in formation — one that is, in its own words, truly Maltese. The narrative strategy chosen by Space Studios Ltd leaned into emotional resonance rather than product specification, prioritising a sense of shared national occasion over feature-led messaging. With 36.4 million active player accounts on MGA-licensed sites at the time — up 2.6% year-on-year according to mga.org.mt — the market context confirmed appetite for gaming participation, even as the specific challenge remained converting that appetite into loyalty toward a newly minted local brand.
Space Studios Ltd served as both agency and production company on Take a Chance, as documented by clapboard.com. The campaign's chosen medium is film, and its governing genre is narrative — a deliberate selection that prioritises emotional storytelling over product demonstration. In a gambling category often dominated by promotional mechanics, odds-led messaging, and fast-cut visual energy, a narrative approach signals a different set of creative ambitions: to make an audience feel something before they are asked to do something.
The film's core creative angle is motivational. It frames lottery participation not as a transaction but as an act of personal courage and communal optimism, encapsulated in the directive to take a chance. This positions the brand inside a broader human conversation about possibility and reward, using the launch moment — a genuinely newsworthy transition in Malta's gambling landscape — as emotional raw material rather than mere context. The campaign contains a single media asset, which concentrates all creative weight on one piece of film and demands that it carry both brand introduction and emotional engagement simultaneously. Production credits for Take a Chance beyond Space Studios Ltd's agency and production role are not publicly documented. The film was published in July 2022 in Malta and archived on clapboard.com with client attribution to National Lottery MT, confirming Space Studios Ltd's dual role across creative and production disciplines. Taken as a whole, the craft decision to use narrative filmmaking for a brand-launch moment in a culturally specific market reflects an understanding that Maltese audiences require more than a product announcement — they require a reason to believe that this new National Lottery is genuinely theirs.
No verified performance data linking Take a Chance directly to sales lift, revenue growth, market-share movement, or brand-tracking metrics is publicly available for this campaign. No media budget or paid-media impressions figures have been disclosed. The campaign has not been recorded as a winner or finalist at Cannes Lions, the Effies, The One Show, D&AD, the Clios, the Webby Awards, or WARC Awards.
The archive entry on clapboard.com documents 76,614 views, 10 likes, and 0 comments for the campaign film, figures that reflect modest organic engagement for a brand-launch piece in a small national market. Malta's population sits well below one million, which means absolute view counts are inherently constrained by geography rather than creative failure alone. Structurally, Take a Chance performs its core function: it establishes a visual identity, communicates a brand name, anchors the launch date, and delivers an emotionally legible proposition in a single film. What the engagement data cannot confirm is whether the narrative approach converted viewers into active players or whether the brand's distinctly Maltese positioning translated into durable affinity beyond the launch window. The campaign's reliance on a single media asset also limits the breadth of audience touchpoints typically associated with high-reach brand launches. For a market where the Malta Gaming Authority oversaw 358 licences and recorded tens of millions of active player accounts on MGA-licensed platforms at year-end 2022, according to mga.org.mt, the structural conditions for a bolder multi-asset campaign were present. Take a Chance earns credit for clarity and cultural intentionality; the evidence does not yet confirm whether those qualities translated into measurable market impact.
Take a Chance is the brand-launch film created by Space Studios Ltd for National Lottery MT in Malta in July 2022. It introduced the new national lottery operator to Maltese audiences, positioning the brand as a genuinely local entertainment and gambling experience combining new games with established lottery classics at the moment the licence transferred.
Space Studios Ltd created Take a Chance, serving as both agency and production company on the campaign. The Malta-based firm produced the single film asset published in July 2022 to coincide with National Lottery plc beginning operations in Malta on 5 July 2022, as documented on clapboard.com and reported by izigroup.com.
National Lottery plc replaced Maltco Lotteries as Malta's licensed lottery operator on 5 July 2022. The transition required a full rebrand, which instore.lottery.mt records as first unveiled on 25 May 2022. Take a Chance served as the public-facing launch film that introduced the new brand identity to Maltese audiences ahead of the first Lotto draw.
The Take a Chance film recorded 76,614 views, 10 likes, and 0 comments, according to the archive entry on clapboard.com. For a small national market like Malta, whose population is well below one million, absolute view counts are constrained by geography, and no additional paid-media impressions or campaign reach data has been publicly disclosed.
Take a Chance receives a Clapboard Score of 55 out of 100. The score reflects a campaign that meets its brand-launch brief with cultural clarity and a coherent narrative approach, while leaving room for greater creative ambition, particularly given the historically significant moment of a full national lottery operator transition in Malta's regulated gambling market.
Malta's gaming industry generated gross value added of €1.495 billion in 2022, representing approximately 9.6% of total GVA, according to mga.org.mt. The Malta Gaming Authority issued 358 licences at year-end 2022. Take a Chance positioned National Lottery MT as a culturally distinct local brand within this competitive, internationally concentrated market, differentiating it from global iGaming operators holding MGA licences.
.webp)
Creative Collaboration Platform: The Backbone of Modern Creative WorkWhat is a creative collaboration platform?Clapboard defines a creative collaboration platform as the operational core for today’s distributed creative teams. This is not a collection of digital collaboration tools stitched together; Clapboard’s system
Understanding the Creative Production MarketplaceWhat is a Creative Production Marketplace?Clapboard defines a creative production marketplace as a structured ecosystem where brands, agencies, and production talent converge to execute video, advertising, and branded content at scale. Unlike the legacy agency or freelanREAD FULL ARTICLE
The Urgent Need for a Creative Production Operating SystemWhy Traditional Creative Production Models Break DownClapboard sees the creative production landscape shifting under pressure. Content velocity is no longer a buzzword—it’s a mandate. Modern advertising demands relentless output across dozens of channels, each wREAD FULL ARTICLE
.jpg&w=256&q=75)
