It amuses me that a lot of people dismiss the national lottery as just a bit of fun.
Biggest gambling operator in the UK, UK Government via its license with camelot etc.
Gambling operator with the biggest number of outlets in the UK, UK government.
Gambling operator with the most advertising in the UK, UK government.
The UK lottery is the single biggest gambling operation in the UK. Up until 3 years ago, a 16 year old could walk into any corner shop, and spend every single penny he/she had on a gambling device that only pays back 53% to the punter. The government had a monopoly on entirely legal 16-17 year old gamblers, no limit on how much these children could lose, and literally could pay out Millions, in tens of thousands of venues.
The age limit was raised in Apr 2021. Unsurprisingly, the £8.3B sales record they set to year ending Apr 2021 has never been beaten in subsequent years, wonder why that is ?
but whereas there is now a lot of legislation and regulation around Know Your Customer and customer safeguarding for any company doing online or betting shop gambling, when is the last time you heard anyone being challenged in a corner shop about their age, or how much they spent on scratch cards, or whether they needed a cooling off period etc. Alsom no other gambling organisation could get away with a misery 53% payback.
And in terms of adveristing, National lottery is absolutely massive, not only in the traditional sense, but just about every major supermarket and minor corner shop you walk into has scratch cards prominently displayed, with shops also doing bespoke signage "rollover this week is £XX millions" etc.
I wager (!) that it is the biggest impetus for gambling in the UK, it has made gambling socially acceptable "it's only the lottery" and I imagine it is also a stepping stone for a lot of people to move into other forms of gambling.
Shops just love the lottery, it's the perfect sales item, no stock, no cost, effectively free money, and a natural footfall generator. Litttle wonder then that you would be hard pressed to find a shop that doesn't do the lottery.
The actual figures publised by the government for 2023 are:-
total ticket sales were £8,190.3 million. This resulted in:
- £1,877.3 million generated for National Lottery projects.
- £4,694 million awarded to players in prizes.
- £982.8 million going to the Government in Lottery Duty.
- £254.7 million earned by retailers in commission.
A nice £1B out of the £8B went straight into the government coffers, UK gov is the single biggest benefactor of UK citizens gambling. I wonder how many who think that it is fundamentally funding charity projects realise that for every £1 that goes to the charities, 50p goes to the government.
And the above figures showing "prizes" isn't telling the true story. The majority of those prizes are low value and will simply be fed straight back into buying more scratch cards, or it's a luck dip, and all you can do with a lucky dip is guess what, buy another ticket. A good proportion of those prizes never result in the player ending up with money.
For comparison, the next biggest gambling company operating in the UK is BET365. Income for year to April 2023 was £3.4B, and they made a loss of £72M.
So want to do something to curb gambling in the UK and reduce advertisment for it, get rid of the lottery would be the single biggest thing. But that would result in an additional £1B black hole. It won't happen.
Afterall, "it could be you"
