Grandson of industrialist Emil Nordby, Reidar Nordby was born in Hamar, Norway in 1948. After studying mechanical engineering at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh, Scotland, he spent the early part of his career at Ideal AS, an international food manufacturing and marketing company based in Norway, first as Technical Director and then as CEO. He entered the lottery industry in 1989 when he assumed the position of President and CEO of Norsk Tipping AS, the Norwegian lottery.
Under his dynamic leadership, Norsk Tipping was consistently recognized as one of the most admired companies in Norway for more than ten years running. One of his signature achievements as President and CEO of Norsk Tipping was to oversee the introduction of player registration, making the Norwegian lottery among the first protagonists of responsible gaming and corporate social responsibility in the regulated lottery and sports betting sector.
In 1993 Nordby founded the Viking Lotto Block, ultimately serving as its chairman. The first multi-jurisdictional lottery game in Europe, Viking Lotto paved the way for subsequent transnational block games, including EuroMillions and EuroJackpot.
A member of the Executive Committee of Intertoto (the International Association of Toto and Lotto Organization) from 1993, he was deeply involved in the merger of Intertoto and AILE, the International Association of State Lotteries, that led in 1999 to the formation of the World Lottery Association (WLA). The Oslo Relations of 1999, which witnessed simultaneous Intertoto and AILE congresses that resulted in the creation of the WLA, were thus hosted by Norsk Tipping.
At the inaugural WLA Convention and Trade Show in Glasgow, Scotland, in June 2000, Reidar Nordby became the WLA’s first elected President, accepting the presidency from founding WLA President Guy Simonis. During his tenure as WLA President, he introduced the WLA Security Control Standard, the regulated lottery sector’s only internationally recognized security standard, and was instrumental in the adoption of the WLA Responsible Gaming Principles at the 2003 WLA General Meeting in Granada, Spain.
In recognition of his leadership role in the formation of the WLA, for his tenure as WLA President, and for his many significant contributions and achievements during his time as President and CEO of Norsk Tipping, Nordby received the WLA’s highest honor, the Guy Simonis Lifetime Achievement Award, at the World Lottery Summit in Montreal, Canada, 2012. He was previously recognized for his remarkable contributions to the regulated lottery industry at the International Lottery Expo in Newport, Rhode Island, in 2001, when the Public Gaming Research Institute conferred upon him their Major Peter J. O’Connell Lifetime Achievement Award. This was the first time that this esteemed North American accolade was presented to a lottery professional from a continent other than North America.
Among his other laudations, Nordby was presented with the Order of the North Star on behalf of King Karl Gustaf of Sweden during a dinner reception at the Swedish Embassy in Oslo in January 2002 by then-Swedish Ambassador Magnus Vahlquist. The Order of the North Star is Sweden’s second-highest order of chivalry and is bestowed for Swedish and foreign “civic merits, for devotion to duty, for science, literary, learned and useful works, and for new and beneficial institutions”. He received the order in appreciation for his work as Consul for the Kingdom of Sweden and for his active contribution to the cooperation between Sweden and Norway.
After leaving Norsk Tipping in 2007, Nordby was a valued consultant to regulated lottery and sports betting organizations and related stakeholders worldwide. A member of the Advisory Board of the China Center for Lottery Studies, Peking University from 2005 to 2008, he also served as a board member of the Norway–Sweden Trade Council, and as Chair of a range of companies including gaming supplier Multilot AS. In later years he served as a member of the National Board of the Norwegian Blood Cancer Association and as a member of the board of Myeloma Patients Europe.
Reidar Nordby is survived by his wife, his two children, and numerous grandchildren. The WLA joins with the Nordby family and the entire regulated lottery and sports betting community in mourning the passing of Reidar Nordby Jr., one of the founding fathers of the WLA, and a visionary industry leader, whose name was synonymous with lottery professionalism.
