Camelot Group: История британской лотереи и смена владельцев

Former operator of the UK National Lottery
the British lottery company

The Camelot Group was the operator of the UK National Lottery whose most recent franchise period started in 2009 and ran until January 2024. It has also operated the Illinois State Lottery in the state of Illinois in the United States since 2018. The Camelot Group companies, of which Camelot UK Lotteries Limited is the UK National Lottery operating subsidiary, are owned by the holding company Premier Lotteries Investments UK Limited. The group's ultimate parent was the Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan, a Canadian investment fund until 2023 when Allwyn AG purchased Camelot. Senior executives such as Tim Holley were enticed to join the project by the promise of large bonuses if the bid was successful. This caused embarrassment later when the incoming Labour government, in particular Chris Smith, the Culture Secretary, publicly criticised Camelot and its executives for excessively lavish salaries and bonus payments. The Camelot Group was awarded the National Lottery franchise in May 1994. It won the bid against Sir Richard Branson who proposed to create a not for profit structure, an idea that didn't seduce the Gambling Commission. The Camelot name is reflected in the actual lottery machines used in the National Lottery draw, which are named for characters, places, and objects in Arthurian Legend (Guinevere, Lancelot, Excalibur, Arthur, etc.). In 2004, the transnational lottery EuroMillions entered the UK lottery market. In March 2009, Camelot announced a programme of redundancies to cut costs throughout the company. In March 2012, the National Lottery Commission extended Camelot's Licence by four years to 2023, on condition that Camelot deliver an additional £1.7 billion in lottery funding to good causes. In October 2013, Camelot doubled the ticket price of its main National Lottery game, Lotto, to £2, with the aim of increasing ticket sales. Analysts noted that in the subsequent two year period, funds raised for good causes by the National Lottery fell by £100 million. In November 2017, Nigel Railton was named CEO of the Camelot group in the midst of dramatic drops in lottery ticket sales. Nigel Railton had served as CEO interim since the departure of Andy Duncan in April 2017. The Watford Headquarters was previously the site of a Scammell Lorries Limited factory.

In March 2010, Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan from Canada announced that it was buying Camelot for £389 million. In October 2013, Premier Lotteries Ireland, a consortium including the Camelot Group with An Post, won the licence to run Ireland's lottery for 20 years until 2034. In January 2018, the Camelot group became the new operator of the Illinois State Lottery in the United States. The state of Illinois was the first in the US to privatize its lottery system. In February 2023, Allwyn AG announced the successful acquisition of Camelot's UK Lotteries Limited from the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan. The deal was approved by the United Kingdom Gambling Commission. Although Allwyn did not disclose the exact value of the acquisition, it was estimated at 100 million pounds.

A franchise renewal competition was started in 2019 and Camelot group faced multiple competing bids to maintain the contract, including one from Northern & Shell (operator of The Health Lottery). In March 2022 the Gambling commission announced that Camelot's National Lottery licence would not be renewed, and the franchise was awarded instead to Allwyn Entertainment Ltd, an international lottery operator owned by the Czech billionaire Karel Komárek. Camelot was held as the 'reserve applicant'. In November 2022, it was announced Allwyn Entertainment Ltd. had acquired Camelot UK Lotteries Limited. The acquisition was completed in February 2023.

In 2009 Giles Knibbs, a Camelot employee, conspired with a member of the public, Edward Putman, to claim a jackpot prize using a bogus ticket. Knibbs, who worked in Camelot's fraud department, found a way to forge lottery tickets bearing unclaimed winning numbers. Putman, of Kings Langley in Hertfordshire, was initially prosecuted in July 2012 for benefit fraud after failing to declare lottery winnings of £5 million whilst in receipt of welfare benefits. Putman refused to give Knibbs £1m they had agreed, and had him arrested after a row over their agreement. Putman charged him with criminal damage, burglary and blackmail. In October 2015 Knibbs took his own life, fearful of repercussions over his actions. Although police did not have enough evidence to bring a prosecution against Putman at the time, the case was investigated by the Gambling Commission in December 2016, who found that Camelot had breached the terms of its operating licence in failing to investigate the veracity of the prize claim before paying out and fined Camelot £3 million. The case was subsequently investigated further and in October 2019 Putman was jailed for 9 years for defrauding the National Lottery of £2.5 million.

In August 2018, the Camelot Group was fined £1.15 million by the Gambling Commission because of the malfunctioning mobile app launched by the group, and for failing to publish a complete raffle prize list. Among other things, the mobile app would apply a non winning label on a user's winning numbers. The Commission fined Camelot for five major failings, and observed 10 other failings that did not lead to further penalties. The Camelot Group accepted the fine and said it was sorry.

In March 2022, the gambling commission announced a £3.15 million fine onto Camelot UK limited due to multiple failures on its mobile app. The failures included informing 20,000 players that their winning draw ticket had not won, charging players twice when only purchasing one ticket, and sending out marketing messages to 65,500 self excluded customers who were not permitted to make purchases on the app.