The National Lottery is back up and running after a complete pause over the weekend to enable the biggest technology upgrade in the game’s 31-year history.
Operator Allwyn said store terminals were back online at 9am on Monday, followed by the website and app at 9.30am.
The first ticket bought on a new “state-of-the-art” Wave lottery terminal – of which there are 8,000 in shops across the UK – was bought in Peterlee, Durham.
Allwyn said it had sold a ticket across all four main games – Set For Life, EuroMillions, Thunderball and Lotto – within two minutes of retail shops opening for trading.
Players can expect the same National Lottery online experience as most of the weekend’s updates took place behind the scenes.
However the new Wave lottery in-store terminals will speed up transactions for players and retailers alike, Allwyn said.
Allwyn chief executive Andria Vidler said: “We’re very grateful to players and our retail partners for their support over the weekend, as we modernised legacy systems and went live at 9am this morning.
“This was several hours ahead of schedule and, in the first hour alone, we sold over 118,000 tickets.”
All draw game sales and prize claims were paused in shops across the UK from 11pm on Saturday night following the Lotto and Thunderball draws to allow for the technology overhaul.
The National Lottery website and app were also down over the same period.
During the pause, Allwyn transferred and upgraded the National Lottery’s gaming and retail systems to new platforms.
The Czech-based Allwyn group – which took over the 10-year licence to run the lottery from Camelot in February last year – said the systems and in-store terminals powering The National Lottery dated back to 2009, “before iPads, Uber and Instagram”, which now needed to be modernised to deliver on “ambitious” plans for a National Lottery “fit for the future”.
