23/05/2005

Camelot announces increase in Lottery sales

National Lottery operator Camelot has announced a rise in lottery ticket sales.

Ticket sales for the National Lottery rose by more than £150 million to £4,776.1 million, over three times the £40 million increase of the previous year.

The new figures mean that a total of £1.5 billion was raised for good causes last year, bringing the total raised since the National Lottery began to over £16.5 billion, benefiting over 190,000 individual projects.

Camelot said that the results showed that the operator’s strategy to increase declining sales was working.

Year-on-year sales for the main Lotto game remained solid at £3,225.3 million. However, ticket sales for non-Lotto games, such as Lotto Hotpicks and themed scratch cards, rose by 10.9 % year-on-year at £1,540.8 million.

Camelot also reported an increase in sales through all the distribution outlets, particularly in new channels such as postal sales and online subscriptions, which increased by 38%.

Interactive sales, via national-lottery.co.uk, the Sky interactive service and Play by Text on mobile phones also increased by 600% from 2003/04 figures.

Current weekly sales via interactive channels are now above £2 million a week, making the UK National Lottery the largest interactive lottery in the world.

Commenting on the figures, Dianne Thompson, Chief Executive of Camelot, said: “I am very pleased to report that our strategy for growth continues to deliver. Our strategy for the coming year will continue to focus on innovation by further developing our portfolio of games and extending the reach of the National Lottery through new channels of distribution.”

(KMcA/SP)


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