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January/February 2016 // PUBLIC GAMING INTERNATIONAL //
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Each winner will receive £33,035,323
after the January 9 Draw. The total prize
amount was the Lottery’s biggest ever after
14 consecutive rollovers.
Camelot Group, the operator of the
UK National Lottery since its incep-
tion in 1994, sold at least 400 tickets a
second, online and by retailers, in the
final hours before sales were stopped.
A spokesman for Camelot said: “This
is certainly an unprecedented level of
sales—one of the highest selling draws
we have ever had. There have been great
levels of excitement leading up to to-
night’s draw, which is great as the higher
the sales, the more we can give to chari-
table causes.” This one Lotto draw raised
£60m for charitable projects.
In the six months to 26 September
2015, Camelot total ticket sales grew to
£3.615 billion, an increase of £145 million
over the corresponding 6-month period of
2014. Over that same period, £875 mil-
lion was generated for the direct benefit of
National Lottery Good Causes.
■
UK NATIONAL
LOTTERY
SETS JACKPOT
RECORD:
£66M JACKPOT
SHARED BY
TWO WINNERS
30 something’s were “discovering” the
Powerball brand and game, and their
purchases helped fuel sales to heights
never seen before. The attractive jack-
pot taught them how to play, when to
play, and forever impressed them with
the “power” of the Powerball brand.
Likewise, significant inroads into the
social media space occurred at many lot-
teries around the country. The number
of “likes,” “followers,” and “friends” in-
creased exponentially as the jackpot rolled,
bringing in new players to the space, many
of them of the younger variety.
This must be a wonderful boon for the ticket
sales, and the funding for Good Causes that
Lottery supports.
G. Grief:
For those of us who work
in the industry, new individual state re-
cords for sales and revenue were being set
on nearly a daily basis, and the numbers
involved sometimes seemed too large to
be accurate; but indeed they were cor-
rect. And yes, Education and the Good
Causes that are Lottery’s mission to sup-
port are the real beneficiaries.
And now, what might the residual longer-
term impact of this event be for Brand Lottery
going forward?
G. Grief:
The question for us now as
an industry is how we can leverage all
the excitement that was generated, all
the new players reached, all the social
media progress made, and turn this mo-
ment into a “tipping point” for the in-
dustry in an upward direction. That’s a
tall order but I know we are up to the
challenge. Just give us a few days to
enjoy the results of this record jackpot,
get our batteries recharged, and we will
get back to moving the industry to even
greater heights!
■
Gary Grief Interview
…
continued from page 56