A Lotto Changes

Have you been to the National Lottery website recently? Remember – the one which went all plain and blockyand ‘responsive’? Then you’ll have seen the new logos for the brand and the games. Keeping the crossed fingers but ‘friendlying’ them up a little with more distinct eye-dots; balls and stars and colours depending on the game. It’s nice, good and fresh.

I like it. But…

I don’t understand the way it has been done. Why they didn’t hold off with the replacement of the website until the branding was finalised and undertake both projects together is beyond me. And the Lotto game is changing (again) in a couple of months – why not do a ‘big bang’ of branding: launch the new game, new site, new brand all at the same time. It would massively raise awareness of the most significant change – the change to the game.

Now, I understand there are three main strategies around ‘collective changes’ like this – nudge (or staged), big-push (or all-at-once), and incoherent. Maybe it was an active decision to do it nudge – it does work in some circumstances, to retain identity, avoid confusion. It might have been resources – they only had one team so had to handle each project separately, one at a time. It may simply not have been considered. It may have been purely preference – after all, the big bang approach is my preference. But if you are making such a significant change to the game, it just seems to make sense to draw attention to that change with a new logo.

Which brings me to the change itself. Obviously we await to see whether it has the effect of driving sales, which is what the refresh is about.

But with this change and the last ‘refresh’ just a couple of years ago (that’s two major changes to the game in 20 years, both in the last 2 years) I can’t help but feel that they don’t really know who their competition is.

Since they established, there have been a couple of other lotteries set up – probably most significantly the Health Lottery. But these aren’t Lotto’s competition. Or weren’t, at least.

Lotto sells between 18 and 30million tickets per ‘normal’ game (non-rollovers, non-specials). The Health Lottery doesn’t have to report ticket sales because it is established under different control and a different regulatory scheme; however on the basis that the top prize of £100,000 for the £1 game is 10% of ticket sales (and there are repeated warnings that if ticket sales are lower, theprize will be lower) we can assume that they sell around a million tickets.

No, the competition comes from the Euromillions draw – still significantly lower, at around 7-8 million tickets per draw, but more than any other lottery game.

So, you’d think that Lotto, when looking to ‘refresh’ the games would focus on the competition, on distinguishing itself from the competition.

But instead it is emulating it.

Previously, you had a choice – Lotto, with a £1 stake got you a 1 in 14million chance of winning; and a 1 in 54 chance of winning a tenner. Euromillions, with a £2 stake got you a 1 in 144 million chance of winning, but a 1 in 23 chance of a couple of quid. You had a clear choice – Lotto for a lower stake but greater chance of winning the jackpot; Euromillions for a bigger jackpot, but a greater chance of winning something.

So, what changes has Lotto introduced?

Well, a couple of years ago, it doubled the stake. There is now no cost difference between Lotto and Euromillions.

Now they are lowering the chance of winning the jackpot by increasing the number of balls in play – idea being more rollovers, bigger jackpots.

And, they are introducing a lower prize tier, therefore increasing your overall chance of winning a couple of quid.

It is now almost undiscernible from Euromillions.