The licensed operator of the UK National Lottery Camelot UK revealed that it is to carry out a through strategic review. The decision for the review comes after the total ticket sales of the National Lottery for the fiscal year from April 1st 201 to March 31st 2017 reached £6,925,300.
This is the fourth-best sales performance of the operator since the National Lottery was first launched in 1994, but still, the figure registered represented a 8.8% decrease in comparison to the record sales estimated to £7,595,200 reached last year.
The Chairman of Camelot, Jo Taylor, praised the operator for its achievements, but confessed that the sales generated over the 2016/2017 fiscal year had not managed to reach the desired rates, especially in terms of Lotto and draw-based games. According to Mr. Taylor, there is work to be done so that the operator makes its players more engaged with its offerings.
In addition, Camelot UK’s Chairman said that the 2017/2018 financial year is expected to be equally, or even more challenging for the National Lottery operator, given the fact that the economic climate in the gambling industry is unstable, and the competition is constantly increasing. Still, he expressed his hopes that the executives of the company would manage to turn the National Lottery to a direction that would lead it back to growth.
The strategic review is to be led by Nigel Railton, Chief Executive Officer of Camelot Global, who succeeded Andy Duncan on top of the company’s UK operations after Duncan announced his decision to part ways with Camelot in April 2017. Also, the audit is to be focused on four major business areas, including technology and systems investments, commercial plans for sales increase, long-term succession, as well as the overall business structure of the company.
An update on the Camelot UK’s findings will be provided by the operator at the time when announcement for its six-month sales is scheduled to be made.
As revealed by the operator itself, the 2016/2017 performance of Camelot saw players and Good Causes share more than £5.4 million. Combined with the Lottery Duty Camelot pays to the UK Government as well as the retail partners’ commissions paid, it turns out that approximately 95 pence of every pound is returned back to society.
Over £30 million are generated by the operator for National Lottery-funded projects on a weekly basis. This makes Camelot’s project the most significant civic and social regeneration programme since the 19th Century.
Also, since its initial launch in 1994, the National Lottery has created over 4,600 millionaires and multi-millionaires, while more than £63 billion in prizes has been awarded so far. Over the 2016/2017 fiscal year, the UK National Lottery operator created a total of 393 new lottery millionaires, and the awarded money prizes amounted to £3,943,200.
As mentioned above, Camelot UK is also one of the largest contributors to Good Causes. In the financial year ended on March 31st 2017, the operator delivered £1,628,000 for Good Causes and has funded over 510,000 individual projects on the territory of the UK. Unfortunately, the total returns to Good Causes turned out to be lower than the ones registered in the previous fiscal year, mainly because of the disappointing performance of draw-based based games.
- Author
Olivia Cole
