Camelot sees Lotto draw sales plummet by 105m

Wed, 10 Sep 2008

Sales of Lotto, the twice-week­ly National Lottery draw and the UK’s biggest grocery brand, have slumped to their lowest level this decade, sliding £105m in the year to April 1, 2008.

New figures from The National Lottery Commission show sales have fallen by a third since 2000 and in 2007/8 hit £2.75bn, a 3% drop on the previous year.

Lottery operator Camelot has previously declined to give figures for annual Lotto sales, preferring to focus on overall sales, which rose 1% in 2007/8 to £4.966bn. This upturn was fuelled by strong growth in scratchcards and instant-win internet games, which rose by over 20% on the previous year to £1.1bn, and sales of Euromillions rose by over 10% to £476m.

Camelot’s strategy is to develop new games and channels, such as playing online, but this appears to be cannibalising sales of its long-standing games. Thunderball sales are down by 6% and HotPicks by nearly 5%.

A spokesman says: “Some 35% of our sales come from games or innovations in­troduced in this licence period. Our strategy is to increase overall sales and we have achieved that. Over the past five years there has been an 8.5% (£391.8m) increase in sales.We will continue to support Lotto.”

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