The LottoPlan team were somewhat perplexed last week when some of the UK’s National newspapers were carrying reports of Lottery players in the UK becoming disinterested in the UK Lotto And Euromillions games . This was a surprise as both our first hand knowledge and anecdotal evidence would point  , in fact to a contrary opinion , i.e. that the UK Lotto and Euromillions games are more popular than ever and experience widespread support and interest.

So why the negative stories in the mainstream national press ? – it comes from the simple fact that UK National Lottery operator Camelot ,owned by the Ontario Teachers Pension Plan published it’s end of year statement for the year ending 31st March 2014 showing a drop in sales from £6.98 billion in 2012/13 to £6.73 billion in 2013/14.

The conclusion drawn was that the drop from £6.98 billion to £6.73 billion in sales was due to disenchantment with the UK Lotto/Euromillions however upon inspection you can soon see that there are mitigating factors that easily explain the slight drop in sales namely :

• The 2012/13 figure was an exceptional figure due to the London Olympics in 2012
• A special 100 Millionaires Raffle was held on the night of the Olympics opening ceremony which was a one -off not to be repeated event
• 2013/14 saw significantly fewer Euromillions rollovers than the year before
• There were no extended rollovers beyond 10 rolls in 2013/14 compared to three in 2012/13 which delivered almost £200 million in additional sales

So , in summary the sales figure for 2013/14 are very good , the second highest total since the National Lottery launched in 1994 , sales increased in the second half of the year due to the restructuring of the UK Lotto game, and sales of Instant Play games were also up 3.8% to a record £2.14 billion !

It’s also worth remembering that in 2013/14 Camelot raised £1.75 billion for National Lottery Good Causes which means that over £31 billion has been raised in total with over 430,000 individual awards being made across the United Kingdom.

Well , now that national press story is debunked let’s concentrate on the Euromillions Draw tomorrow night – looks worth a punt !