The Health Lottery, together with The Lotteries Council (the trade association representing the needs of all society/charity lotteries),has been lobbying government for six years to increase the maximum jackpot in a single draw to £1 million.
The charities also want to remove the 10 per cent rule, which means offering £1 million will not be dependent on selling 10 million tickets in a single draw.
To compete in today’s lottery market and to prevent charities from closing, it is important that society lotteries are allowed to offer a big jackpot, in order to grow sales and in turn raise more money for good causes.
Currently, the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) has agreed to keep the maximum jackpot in a single draw at £25,000 or 10 per cent of ticket sales in a draw but to increase the cap to £500,000.
This means the maximum jackpot a society lottery will be able to offer is £500,000 but only if they sell 5 million tickets in a draw - which is near impossible for them to do.
The Health Lottery and The Lotteries Council are continuing to lobby government to re-think the DCMS proposal and to consider society lotteries being able to offer a £1 million jackpot per draw - regardless of sales - and to abolish the 10 per cent rule in the future.
As an interim measure, the Health Lottery and The Lotteries Council are urging the government to raise the maximum jackpot per draw from £25,000 to £500,000 - by so doing society lotteries can offer a £500k jackpot and not be stifled by the 10 per cent rule.
As well as the huge difference in scale there are many other significant differences between the National Lottery and society lotteries.
These are:
- They are subject to different legislation and regulatory regimes.
- The National Lottery, unlike society lotteries, has no draw, annual turnover or prizes limits.
- The National Lottery, unlike GB society lotteries, operates across the whole of the nation, including Northern Ireland and the Isle of Man. Society lotteries regulated by the Gambling Commission can only operate in England, Scotland and Wales.
- Society Lotteries have to give at least 20 per cent of ticket income to good causes. This is not the case for the National Lottery with National Lottery scratch cards giving only between 5% and 16% to good causes, according to the National Audit Office. The most recent annual Gambling Commission statistics (year to March 2017) show that the National Lottery returns 21.5 per cent to good causes from sales of all of its products.
