Camelot is carrying out a strategic review after achieving total National Lottery ticket sales for the 2016/17 financial year (April 1, 2016 to March 31, 2017) of £6,925.3m.
Although the fourth-best sales performance since the Lottery’s launch in 1994, the figure represents a fall of 8.8% when set against last year’s record sales of £7,595.2m.
The review is being led by Nigel Railton, CEO of Camelot Global, who took over Camelot’s UK operations following Andy Duncan’s decision in April to step down. It is focusing on four key business areas – commercial plans to boost sales performance; investment in technology and systems; the current business structure; and long-term succession – and an update will be given when Camelot announces its half-year sales later in the year.
Camelot’s performance in 2016/17 saw players and good causes share over £5.4bn, with 393 new millionaires created in the process.
Jo Taylor, Chairman of Camelot, said: “Achieving the fourth-highest ever sales, creating a record number of lottery millionaires and raising over £30 million every week for Good Causes is no mean feat. However, sales in 2016/17 fell well short of where we’d like them to be – and that’s largely down to a disappointing year for draw-based games and Lotto in particular. There’s clearly work to be done to re-engage players and address the performance of our draw-based games – and this is one key area that Nigel is focusing on as part of the wider review he is conducting.
“Given the current climate of economic uncertainty and increasing competition from the gambling sector, we expect 2017/18 to be equally, if not more, challenging for The National Lottery. It will therefore take time to turn things around and I anticipate a further sales decline this year. I am, however, confident that the review will enable us to put the business on the best possible footing to get back into growth – and so deliver even more for our players and the millions of people for whom National Lottery funding is so crucial over the remainder of this licence period.”
