Camelot has announced upcoming changes to Lotto and EuroMillions, as well as preliminary details of a brand-new draw game that will launch in 2019.
The changes follow the company’s recent wide-ranging strategic review, which identified improving the range of National Lottery games as one of four key areas where action was needed.
The major alterations are:
- On Lotto, new bigger, fixed cash prizes in the main game – including a fixed prize of £1m for matching 5 + Bonus Ball – will replace the raffle.
- The Lotto jackpot will be won or shared more often – the jackpot will only be allowed to roll five times (compared with around 10 rolls today), and a new ‘Rolldown’ mechanic will see the jackpot shared across all winning cash prize tiers if no one matches all six main numbers in a must-be-won draw.
- On EuroMillions, the prizes on the main game will stay exactly the same, but Camelot will run more special draws in which multiple guaranteed £1m UK winners are created – and these will be bigger and better. To help fund these, Camelot will only guarantee one UK millionaire in every draw instead of the current two.
- Subject to regulatory approval, Camelot will launch a brand-new annuity game in the spring of 2019, which is expected to have a top prize of thousands of pounds every month for at least 25 years.
Announcing the changes, Camelot CEO Nigel Railton said: “It was clear from the review that we needed to create a more appealing and balanced range of games that offers something for everyone. In particular, we needed to make our draw games stand out from each other and to give people the ability to play their way – with prizes, chances to win and prices to suit different tastes.”
In the future players will be able to choose from four clearly distinct offerings:
- A huge, rolling jackpot game (EuroMillions)
- A core millionaire-maker game (Lotto)
- A £1 value game with a top prize of £500,000 (Thunderball)
- A brand-new annuity game (subject to regulatory approval)
The changes follow the launch of a new EuroMillions HotPicks game and the addition of an extra Thunderball draw day in January this year – both of which performed ahead of Camelot’s expectations and boosted returns to Good Causes in the last two months of the 2017/18 financial year.
