The UK National Lottery will undergo an audit review by the National Audit Office (NAO), which will look into how effective the Gambling Commission and the Department for Culture, Media and Sports (DCMS) have been in handling the licence transition and their oversight duties.
The fourth licence to operate the lottery was won by Allwyn UK following a tender application against main rival Camelot, which had been operating the lottery since 1994.
Coming into effect in 2024, Allwyn had promised to double good causes contributions from £30m to £60m per week, or £3.2bn per year, by the end of its 10-year contract.
Yet to be achieved, granted the operator is still in the second year of its tenure, some have called Allwyn’s commitment as ambitious.
But this is to be expected from a company like Allwyn, Editor of SBC News Ted Orme-Claye said, with the commitment highlighting the importance of the contract for the operator and setting a clear standard for the rest of its 10-year tenure.
“I think that Allwyn in general is a very ambitious company. This really just speaks more to their group-wide ambitions of being a lottery entertainment company. They know that getting that UK lottery tender was a really big moment for them a couple of years ago,” Orme-Claye said for the iGaming Daily podcast.
“They’d already established themselves as a prominent operator in other markets. The Czech Republic, Greece, building up a bit of a presence in North America as well. Getting that UK contract was a really big moment for them.
“I think they wanted to set that target very early to set a precedent throughout the rest of the 10-year license.”
It is worth noting, however, that good causes contributions came to an almost decade-long drop between April and June this year, standing at £377.2m according to official Gambling Commission data.
The reasons behind this could be various, but it would not aid Allwyn once scrutiny of its licence management starts building up, Viktor Kayed, Senior Journalist at SBC News, added.
“It does raise a question when performance falls behind expectations that underperformance could have a lot of reasons behind it.
“It could be the economic environment in the UK itself, it could be the jackpot cycles. If we’re looking at the operator, it could be how those games are being marketed and delivered to market.
“However, the drop from April to June being the lowest quarterly figure in a decade will definitely not help Allwyn’s case whenever further scrutiny arises in the future.”
The assessment by NAO, which will continue until Spring 2027, will look at whether the Commission and the DCMS have put an effective framework in place to ensure that contributions are maximised, including support for the licence transition and the design of the award process itself.
