Player Guide

Background

To ensure players have accurate and up-to-date information about National Lottery games, the National Lottery Commission requires Camelot to adopt, maintain and comply with a Player Guide, which is approved by the Commission. Camelot must ensure that any material designed to encourage or enable a player to enter into or play a Lottery game is accurate, does not mislead players and is compatible with game rules and procedures.

A Player Guide explaining how to play National Lottery games, the prize structures and general game information is provided as a free leaflet at retailers. Similar material is provided on the National Lottery website for interactive players.

Condition

The Conditions that cover the information in the Player Guide are 7.21(a) and 7.42 of the third Licence to operate the National Lottery, granted under Section 5 of the National Lottery etc. Act 1993 (as amended).

Description

Player Guides produced by Camelot for the third licence contained inaccuracies and were not in line with the versions approved by the Commission. Issue number 14 Version contained the following errors against the approved versions:

the lowest prize category in the EuroMillions game was ‘Match … 2 main numbers.’ The correct approved position is ‘Match … 2 main numbers + 1 Lucky Star;the approximate odds of winning the Lotto jackpot was incorrectly stated as ’(1 in) 3,983,816.’ The correct and approved statement is ’(1 in) 13,983,816’;the approximate odds of matching the first five digits on Dream Number was incorrectly stated as (I, in) ‘I I I , I .’ The correct and approved statement is (1 in) ‘111,112’;a header ‘Best Shot’ was included in the Thunderball section of the guide which had the potential to mislead players into believing that the Thunderball game offers the best odds of winning a National Lottery game; anda statement was included in the Thunderball section of the guide which had the potential to mislead players into believing that they could win a prize of a new sports car as opposed to a financial prize.p. Version 1 of the Guide was removed by Camelot from retail outlets in mid February 2009. A subsequent version of the Player Guide, issue number 14 Version 2 had not corrected the last two inaccuracies, although these had been brought to the attention of Camelot.

Regulatory action

The Commission considered Camelot’s explanation for the errors, which included staff workloads and time constraints during the transition to the third Licence, but considered the mistakes occurred due to a failure in  quality control. In light of this the Commission has concluded that there were two breaches of the Licence. The Licence breaches were recorded on 16 July 2009.

Outcome

Camelot has since reviewed this case and improved its quality control arrangements for the issuing of player documents.