UK National Lottery Review

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Note: This review is based solely on the opinions of ComparetheLotto.com. Please be aware that odds, offers and features are constantly subject to change. Always check the operators sites for factual verification. #Ad. Find out more on our How Our Site Works page.

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The UK National Lottery is synonymous with Lottery in the UK. If anyone mentions ‘Lottery’ in the UK they are talking about the UK National Lottery. Their market share is truly staggering. When it first launched in 1994, it was the only lottery available to UK players and backed by the UK Government so essentially had a monopoly. However, in recent years the whole lottery landscape has changed quite significantly with the introduction of other lotteries such as Euromillions, Health Lottery and Postcode Lottery then even more recently the ‘bet on jackpots’ operators such as Jackpot.com and LottoGo that truly are giving the whole industry a shake up.

Firstly, let’s take a look at some numbers:

• £1.5 BILLION donated to good causes from April 2018 - March 2019 See report
• £7.2 BILLION in ticket sales from April 2018 - March 2019
• On average £30,000,000 is raised for good causes every single week!
• Approximately 70% of UK adults play the UK National Lottery at least once per month. This equates to approximately 30 Million people.
• 5,500 UK Millionaires made since first draw in 1994

Absolutely incredible numbers, both for money raised for good causes and for the amount of winners created. So, where do the UK Lottery spend all of their ‘good causes’ money? Well, who better to tell you than Jimmy Carr and a whole host of other UK celebrities:

To summarise, that’s:

• Charities
• Wembley Stadium
• Community Project
• Olympic Medals
• The Angel of The North
• Heritage Sites
• Films
• Support for Homeless People
• Archeology
• Wildlife
• ...plus many others shouted at the end of the clip!

Undeniably an amazing force for good in UK culture and a very effective way to raise £1.5B per year while providing an exciting services for its customers.

How To Win The Jackpot

To play the UK National Lottery you have to pick 6 numbers from 1 - 59. Each line you play costs £2. To win the jackpot you need to match all 6 numbers. The odds of this happening is 1 in 45,057,474, which although that sounds bad, compared to other lotteries it’s fairly average. The odds of winning the US Powerball is 1 in 292M and the odds of winning the Euromillions is 1 in 139M.

Syndicates

The UK National Lottery claims that 1 in 5 large wins are won by syndicates. Syndicates are a great way of sharing the excitement with friends and families while also increasing your chance of winning - obviously, the flip side to this is you have to share your winnings.

Unfortunately, the experience of creating a syndicate on the National Lottery is clunky and feels like it hasn’t been updated since the nineties (which, it probably hasn’t!). Firstly, you have to download a ‘Syndicate Agreement’ which is essentially a contract to make sure the syndicate manager doesn’t run off with all the winnings. Then, you, or whoever is the syndicate manager, is responsible for collecting payments from the other members and playing the lines each week. This is quite laborious and unnecessary and another example of where companies like Jackpot.com are able to innovate faster and provide a better service to customers - Jackpot.com allows you to join a syndicate online with everything automated.

Scratchcards & Instant Wins

Almost as synonymous as the National Lottery are their scratchcards. You can’t walk into a newsagents, petrol station or supermarket without seeing the colourful displays.

The amount you pay for scratchcards vary from £1 to £5 with the jackpot varying from £100 to £4,000,000.

The National Lottery has a page which tells you how many jackpot scratch cards are still available to be won for each title (see here). However, as they don’t publish the total number of scratchcards printed out it’s impossible to work out the odds of winning the jackpot.

Some of the most popular scratchcards are:

• Instant Millionaire - £5 to play - Win £1,000,000
• Monopoly Jackpot - £5 to play - Win £1,000,000
• Bee Lucky - £1 to play - Win £5,000
• Bangers ‘n’ Cash - £1 to play - Win £5,000
• Super 7’s - £2 to play - Win £100,000

The scratchcards on offer are changing regularly, for an up to date list click here.

All UK National Lotteries

Aside from ‘Lotto’, the UK National Lottery also offers the following games:

* September 2016 - 2019
** Approximate. Based on 2015 - 2019.

Value Ratio Explained

The value ratio shows the value for money you are getting. The lower the value ratio the better value for money it is. The calculation is:

(Odds of Winning ÷ (Average Jackpot ÷ Stake))

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UK Customers: Yes

Syndicates: Yes

Commission on Winnings: No

Payment Methods: Visa, Mastercard, Maestro, Visa Electron, Direct Debit

License: The National Lottery games are promoted by Camelot UK Lotteries Limited under licence from the UK Gambling Commission.

Social Followers: Facebook (828,000), Twitter (191,000)

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* Information correct as of 17/12/19. Check www.national-lottery.co.uk website for latest information

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OVERALL RATING:

The National Lottery is ranked #1 out of 3 traditional lotteries