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Exclusive: Upcoming National Lottery reforms for shops revealed

Allwyn's planned changes to the National Lottery, and how they might affect convenience stores, have been revealed

A host of changes to the National Lottery have been revealed through operator Allwyn’s job adverts and reps. Developments in­clude a “new Retailer Incentive programme”, making scratchcards available for sale in more stores, new draw-based games, promoting home-delivery scratchcard sales and potential delays to the rollout of new terminals in stores.

Retailer rewards

A retail analyst role describes a new retailer incentive scheme as a “strategic initiative”. It will replace the current retailer re­wards where stores can earn £10 and win up to £10,000 by uploading fixture photos. The aver­age store earns £23 a year through the initiative.

“The current programme – Site, Stock, Sell and Site, Stock, Sell Online – will continue into 2025,” An Allwyn spokesper­son told Better Retailing. “And we’ll be announcing our plans for new incentive schemes later this year.”

More competition

Previous operator Ca­melot’s strategy of adding lottery products to more sites led to concern over enhanced competition. The role of senior brand manager for scratchcards shows this strategy is set to continue. The description states in the longer term it would be “making them available in brand-new places”.

Allwyn confirmed: “Our top-line plan is to mod­ernise the category with fresh new designs and by ensuring we’re respond­ing to any changes to shopping habits – includ­ing how and where people choose to shop.”

New games

No announcement has been made on the future of the current draw-based games. A senior prod­uct manager role for the category suggests changes and new launches are likely. The role is to “de­velop the business case for product change and new product development projects”.

The job ads also raised hopes that new “instant win” games printed on store terminals could be part of Allwyn’s plans. Future National Lottery technology provider Scientific Games had described them as the “fastest-grow­ing category” globally. However, Allwyn told Better Retailing: “Fast Play games are not currently part of our plans in this area.”

Scratchcards delivered

Camelot and Allwyn only allow major supermar­kets to sell scratchcards for home delivery. Operators blamed this on guid­ance from the Gambling Commission on prevent­ing underage sales.

Snappy Shopper this year confirmed to Better Retailing that it was in talks to allow independents to also sell scratchcards for delivery. Regardless, Allwyn is planning to ramp up online sales with major grocers. A senior national account manager for the super-markets is tasked to “develop the e-commerce scratch­card plan”.

Read more Snappy Shopper news

Terminal delays

Better Retailing spoke to two Allwyn reps earlier this month. They claimed most stores were unlikely to get their new device this year. One blamed the “big process” of the operator switch. They said: “It’ll probably be about 12-to-18 months before new terminals will make it to stores.”

Responding to the claims, an Allwyn spokesperson told Better Retailing: “The large-scale project of equipping stores with the latest innovative kit, a new network provided by Vodafone, state-of-the-art terminals and new software will be a phased process. We’ll start introduc­ing new National Lottery kit and network solutions from this spring, and, as we’ve said all along, we’ll begin a phased rollout of terminals towards the end of the year.”

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