Camelot strikes Saturday night entertainment sponsorship with ITV
The deal marks the first time that all three of the channel’s Saturday night programmes have been sponsored by a single brand, taking both The National Lottery and ITV into new territory, Camelot said.
The sponsorship begins on 19 December and will run every weekend for three months, including on-air sponsorship, multi-platform activation and a bespoke licensing package.
It will feature a number of “amusing, larger-than-life idents” created by Wallace and Gromit studio Aardman, and includes visibility on ITV’s streaming platform ITV Hub, the age-gated version of The Voice UK app, and The National Lottery’s and ITV’s own channels.
The agreement was negotiated and will be managed by media agency Vizeum, with creative strategy and approach led by communications agency Adam & Eve. ITV Creative heads up production and creative integration of the deal.
Camelot’s chief marketing officer, Keith Moor, said: “The National Lottery has been making Saturday night more entertaining for the past 26 years, with every ticket providing a moment of anticipation while also helping to raise around £30 million each week for National Lottery-funded good causes.
“These are ITV’s flagship entertainment shows with the biggest audiences – so there’s a fantastic fit between the two brands with this partnership, and it will only help people to better understand the connection between The National Lottery’s unique purpose and play.”
ITV’s director of commercial sales and partnerships, Mark Trinder, welcomed Camelot as a new sponsor, while celebrating the return of three of ITV’s most popular programmes.
In June, Camelot signed an extension to its contract to continue operating the UK’s National Lottery for an additional six months until July 2023, after a tender process for the next licence was delayed by three months.
The tender was launched by the Gambling Commission in August, with the preferred applicant to be announced in September 2021.
In October, Camelot completed the first stage of the National Lottery tender process, completing the Gambling Commission’s Selection Questionnaire. It was the third business to confirm it had completed the questionnaire, after Czech gaming giant Sazka Group and Indian lottery operator and technology supplier, Sugal & Damani.
In November, results published by Camelot showed that sales had declined 1.7% to £3.85bn in the first half of its 2020/21 financial year, as mobile growth largely offset a drop in retail sales caused by the novel coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic.
Following the UK Government’s review of the Gambling Act announced earlier this week, Camelot supported a proposal to increase the minimum age to play the National Lottery from 16 to 18, saying it will take steps to implement the change by April, in advance of the law coming into effect in October.