By IANS
London : Indian lottery major Sugal and Damani Tuesday narrowly missed securing the licence to run Britain’s multi-billion pound National Lottery for a period of 10 years from February 2009.
The contract has been awarded by the National Lottery Commission to Camelot, the company that currently runs the lottery. It has run the lottery since its launch in 1994. Its current licence runs for seven years and expires on Jan 31, 2009.
The National Lottery Commission had said that the two bidders would ultimately be judged on the amount of money they could raise for good causes. It wanted them to bring in modern, flexible technology such as new ticket terminals.
Sugal and Damani and Camelot were short-listed as the last two bidders out of initial bids by several international contenders. The Delhi-based Sugal and Damani have run lotteries in several Indian states.
Lottery figures show that total spending on lottery tickets fell last year to 4.91 billion pounds from 5.01 billion pounds while money raised for good causes also dropped to 1.24 billion pounds from 1.29 billion pounds.
The successful bidder had to show that it could manage the transition to the next licence smoothly, a requirement experts believed would favour Camelot. The company will now be expected to hit targets for raising funds for the 2012 Olympics.
About 2.2 billion pounds is currently earmarked from lottery funds for the Olympics, with 750 million pounds expected to come from specially-designated games.
Camelot is also promising to launch the world’s first global lottery draw as part of its package of games, which will create up to 100 millionaires every month.