With Camelot doubling the price of a National Lottery ticket, retailers were concerned that the price would put off customers, cutting not only sales of lottery tickets but the important footfall that went with them. But is that actually proving to be the case?
Leslie Kilminster
Premier/ Best-one
I saw a big drop in sales in the first week. We normally take around £1,200 in one of our stores and it was down to £800. Customer feedback hasn’t been good. Nothing positive was said about the cost and lots of people have indicated that they’ll stop playing on a Wednesday to pay for the Saturday ticket. To see £400 less coming into the shop when the price has doubled is major. It could be that it was just an odd week but sales in elsewhere were steady so I’ll keep a close eye on it.
David Mitchell
KeyStore
Camelot would have you believe that everything is hunky dory, that’s it’s gone well, but it’s not. When tickets were still £1 I took around £600 for a Saturday draw. Ticket goes up to £2 and my sales are now £1,200. That may just look like I’m selling the same amount of tickets, but Wednesday sales are down 25-30%, which is cause for concern. It seems fairly evident that many customers who played twice a week are choosing to skip a draw. I don’t think it’s effecting overall footfall however.
Donna Morgan
Best-one
Our sales have remained pretty much the same. If anything they’ve gone up slightly, which is great as the increase in price means we’re getting more commission per ticket. A couple of customers have cut their spending, but for most there was just a bit of a whinge and then they carried on as normal. All the negativity came before, but I think people have been using the same numbers for years and don’t want to stop. The only dip has been people who bought multiple lucky dip tickets are now only buying one.
Saleem Sadiq
Spar
We’ve seen a slight increase in sales value, which is what we were hoping would happen. The actual volume of sales has dropped slightly. On a Wednesday our average was 170 and it’s down to 145, and on a Saturday we’ve dropped from 250 to around 230, so it’s good for revenue; we can certainly afford the rate of sale to drop off with the additional cost of a ticket. People are obviously still working to same budget so maybe someone who was spending £10 is only buying five tickets now.