Camelot to review UK National Lottery strategy

The UK’s National Lottery provider, Camelot, has said it is to conduct an in-depth review of its strategy following an 8.8% drop in ticket sales to £6.92bn (€7.86bn/$8.8bn) for 2016/17, from £7.59bn for the previous year.

Despite the drop, the 2016/17 results were actually Camelot’s fourth highest yearly sales, but the company has recently faced competition from secondary lottery products, such as Lottoland, which do not have to give part of their revenues to charity.

The strategy review will focus on four key business areas: commercial plans to boost sales performance; investment in technology and systems; the current business structure; and long-term succession.

The company said an update will be given when Camelot announces its half-year sales.

Jo Taylor, chairman of Camelot, said: “Achieving the fourth-highest ever sales, creating a record number of lottery millionaires and raising over £30 million every week for Good Causes is no mean feat.

“However, sales in 2016/17 fell well short of where we’d like them to be – and that’s largely down to a disappointing year for draw-based games and Lotto in particular.

“There’s clearly work to be done to re-engage players and address the performance of our draw-based games – and this is one key area that Nigel is focusing on as part of the wider review he is conducting.

“Given the current climate of economic uncertainty and increasing competition from the gambling sector, we expect 2017/18 to be equally, if not more, challenging for The National Lottery.

“It will therefore take time to turn things around and I anticipate a further sales decline this year.

“I am, however, confident that the review will enable us to put the business on the best possible footing to get back into growth – and so deliver even more for our players and the millions of people for whom National Lottery funding is so crucial over the remainder of this licence period.”

In April, Camelot announced Andy Duncan was to leave his role as chief executive of the company and be replaced by Nigel Railton, on an interim basis, while the firm sought a permanent replacement.

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