Camelot reports digital sales increase

Lotto

Camelot UK Lotteries today announced that National Lottery ticket sales for the 2017/18 financial year (1 April 2017 to 31 March 2018) were £6,951.7 million – an increase of £26.4 million on last year and an early indication that initiatives from the company’s recent strategic review are yielding results.

Welcoming the announcement, Camelot CEO Nigel Railton said: “Given that we had anticipated a further sales decline this year, our achievement in getting The National Lottery back into growth and delivering more money for Good Causes underlines the importance of the work we have been carrying out following the strategic review. It’s fair to say that sales benefited from a nice run of luck – particularly on EuroMillions with some incredible jackpots – but the strong foundations and new initiatives that we are putting in place have also started to play a part.”

During 2017/18, Camelot generated £1,655.3 million (excluding investment returns) for Good Causes, £27.3 million more than in 2016/17. This equates to around £30 million every week and takes the total delivered to date to more than £38 billion. National Lottery funding has now been awarded to 535,000 individual projects – the equivalent of around 190 lottery grants in every UK postcode district.

Over the course of the year, Camelot awarded £3,928.4 million in prizes to players and created 343 new millionaires. The National Lottery has now awarded over £67 billion in prizes and created more than 5,000 millionaires or multi-millionaires since its launch.

The sales increase over the period was, in part, due to record digital sales of £1,652.2 million, which included the best-ever performance by The National Lottery’s range of online Instant Win Games. Mobile sales grew to an all-time high of £700.6 million, with sales through smartphones and tablets now accounting for well over 40% of all digital sales. Sales through the official National Lottery apps for iPhone and Android also set new records, following the launch of a full version of the Android app last year – instantly making National Lottery games available to millions more smartphone users.

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