On Sunday, the Daily Mail in England reported that Camelot Gaming Services – the company that was given the Pennsylvania Lottery – is doubling the price of lottery tickets and reducing donations to charitable organizations. In England, the current lotto ticket is 1 pound and 28 pence of ticket sold goes towards charities. According to the article, Camelot has had falling revenues over the past couple of years, and to offset the revenues the company will raise lotto tickets to 2 pounds, which will “offer bigger prizes and raise more money for good causes.”
Camelot is cutting the amount of money from each Lotto ticket sold that it gives to good causes.
The National Lottery operator is doubling the price of a ticket to £2 in September and said it would enable it to offer bigger prizes and raise more money for good causes.
But the company, owned by the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan, will also reduce the amount per ticket that it gives to good causes.
This is currently averages 28p out of every £1 spent on a ticket, but Camelot would not say by how much this would fall. It said all of the money resulting from the cut in money going to good causes would go towards lottery prizes.
The company, which has run the National Lottery since it began in 1994, raised £6.5 billion in ticket sales last year.
Lotto is the main game in the National Lottery but its sales have been falling for a number of years. Camelot believes that without its proposed changes, which have been cleared by the regulator, the National Lottery Commission, that decline will continue.
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Sean Kitchen is an Assistant Editor and Social Media Organizer for Raging Chicken Press. He is student at Kutztown University
Why privatize something that is working just fine. Is it privatization for privatization’s sake?