News writer
For almost two weeks, hundreds of retailers in the UK have had no available National Lottery offerings thanks to a decommissioned third-party satellite.
The outage
Beginning July 1, a National Lottery outage swept 300 stores in the UK. Allwyn, the Czech-based company that has run UK's National Lottery since last year, decommissioned a third party satellite and said they have been warning retailers about the outage since April. Since then, the company has been trying to upgrade retail outlets to a new connection.
Allwyn said that they have already transitioned the most affected retailers. An Allywn spokesperson told Better Retailing:
We contacted over 11,500 National Lottery retailers to inform them of essential network maintenance required to avoid service disruption from July 1. The outage was outside of our control and necessitated migrating affected stores to a new network.
In the interview with Better Retailing, the company said that some retailers have resisted Allwyn's visits to upgrade their connection, while other retailers require upgrades that take longer to install because they're using older technology.
Another outage
An unrelated outage was announced by Allwyn, saying the National Lottery will be down at some point for all stores this summer for 36 hours over one weekend. Allwyn's UK chief executive, Andria Vidler, stated:
Technical switchover will happen over one weekend this summer, and to enable the news systems to go live, National Lottery terminals will be inactive for approximately 36 hours.
The statement described the upgrade as:
A springboard from which Allwyn can continue to improve the player and retailer experience, which will ultimately generate greater footfall, in-store play and return National Lottery custom.
Why all the upgrades?
Allwyn took over all National Lottery operations in February 2024 under a 10-year license. It was the first time the lottery switched hands from the company Camelot in 30 years. After the switch, Allwyn reported a 1% dip in lottery sales year over year.
In May, the Great Britain Gambling Commission considered action against Allwyn for not delivering on its contractual promises, including technical upgrades.
Allwyn said it would invest 350 million pounds into the technical modernization of the National Lottery, which hasn't been upgraded significantly since 2009. Allwyn has also promised to reduce ticket prices from two pounds to one pound. Allwyn said in a statement:
Our investment will help restore the magic to The National Lottery, but the shift from outdated systems is complex and requires robust testing. We will deliver essential upgrades over the coming year. We are working at pace to complete this transformation as soon as possible.
It appears that the digital upgrades are rolling out now, with a cost to some retailers, at least temporarily.
The hit on retail profits
Retailers earn a 6% commission on scratch cards, a 5% commission on draw-based games, and a 1% commission on prizes if a winning ticket is purchased in their store. This adds up when the National Lottery is so popular, drawing 20 million people regularly, according to the Lottery Tax Calculator.
Lottery users may also spend money on other store products while they're playing. With all the outages, many retailers are taking a short-term hit. Hopefully, however, Allwyn's upgrades lead to long-term gains.
Comments