Between September and October 2022, the National Lottery’s operator, Premier Lotteries, violated its licence, as detailed in the National Lottery Regulator’s annual report in Ireland. Additionally, in 2023, sales experienced a decrease of 6.2 per cent compared to the previous year.
The violation occurred due to a software employed by a third party on the National Lottery’s website’s check my numbers feature. During the verification of draw results, some customers were wrongly notified that their tickets were not winners. However, this issue was contained within the web feature and didn’t affect the in-store machines.
Consequently, as many as 394 awards remained uncollected, totalling up to an unclaimed value of €2,299; this included one €250 prize and several others ranging between €2 and €24. However, the organisation noted that this did not cause a significant surge in the rate of unclaimed prizes during this timeframe.
In 2022, Premier Lotteries Ireland detected the glitch and reported it to the regulator. The operator made no gains from this mistake and refunded the €2,299 total of potentially affected unclaimed prizes to the players.
Alongside designing the lottery games, Premier Lotteries Ireland runs them, whilst the regulator makes sure the licence agreement between the operator and the State is respected.
The regulator imposed a €23,000 penalty on Premier Lotteries Ireland as a result of this issue, directing the funds towards charitable causes via the exchequer.
The regulator of the National Lottery, Carol Boate, sees any license breach as serious, reflected by her decision to withhold €23,000 from the operator until a satisfactory technical solution can be implemented.
A review by Grant Thornton found no issues regarding the National Lottery’s prize checking systems. However, due to decreasing usage, Premier Lotteries Ireland has elected to wind down the check my numbers feature on their website.
A representative of the regulator reasoned that it was a business decision to remove the check my numbers feature from the website since it showed a marked drop in usage, consistent with the increasing popularity of QR code scanning.
Despite introducing the new game, EuroDreams, at the end of 2023, the National Lottery experienced a successive annual loss in profits. According to the analysis, it recorded €829.4 million in sales for the year 2023, falling 6.2 per cent from the previous year. In comparison, the profits topped high at €1.05 billion in 2021.
The Lottery’s regulator spokesperson suggested that the substantial sales in 2020 and 2021 were due to the significant movement restrictions instigated by the Covid situation. However, he asserted that the 2023 sales were consistent with the sales pattern seen in the 2018 and 2019 period. The novel EuroDreams game awards players a certain cash prize each month opposed to a lump sum winning. Despite this change, it didn’t prevent the decline in sales.