It’s time to come clean on why Camelot lost the national lottery licence
It is good practice for companies to change their auditors once in a while, and the same principle should probably apply to countries and operators of national lotteries. So yes, one can instinctively welcome the Gambling Commission’s surprise decision to ditch Camelot, which has had the national lottery gig since it was launched 28 years ago. No company should become part of the furniture.
What, though, has Czech group Allwyn, the new “preferred applicant”, promised to do differently to Camelot? It’s impossible to tell because the commission, at this stage, insists on cloaking its decision-making process in secrecy. Assurances that the process was “fair, open and robust” don’t count for much unless the outside world can see the methodology.
The clincher, we assume, was Allwyn’s idea that it can raise £38bn for good causes over the decade of the next licence which, even allowing for inflation and greater prosperity among punters over the years, would compare favourably against the £45bn-ish that Camelot has managed since 1994. But the £38bn figure is not yet endorsed by the commission, which merely referenced “increased contributions”.
Camelot will probably also have promised to up its game in terms of sums raised, as the other bidders will have done. So how did the commission set about judging the credibility of the various boasts? We’re not told.
A degree of paranoia on the part of commission is probably forgivable since the contract is lucrative for the holder (Camelot, owned by a Canadian pension fund, has made after-tax profits of £78m in each of the last two years) and legal challenges are possible, and perhaps likely. Even so, it’s hard to think of another piece of semi-public procurement with such minimal levels of
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