The National Lottery says it has no choice but to use unclaimed prize money for advertising.

Sales of lottery tickets broke the €1bn mark for the first-time last year – with a record rollover period contributing to the game’s growth.

The Lotto jackpot rolled over at €19m for three months last year, meaning customers bought tickets without anyone winning the main prize more than 50 times in a row.

The controversy saw politicians getting involved, with operator Premier Lotteries Ireland (PLI) eventually changing the rules so it could run a must-win-jackpot game.

On Breakfast Business this morning, PMI Chief Andrew Algeo said those rules are now in place permanently.

“In the future, when the Jackpot reaches the maximum cap of €19m, it will behave just like The EuroMillions and it will roll five times and then it must be won,” he said.

“On a must-be-won draw, if nobody correctly picks the six numbers in the jackpot, then instead the jackpot will be won by those who correctly guessed five.”

National Lottery

Mr Algeo said the lottery has seen six years of continuous growth since PMI took over – with €300m of last year’s income going to good causes.

Meanwhile, his company made an operating profit of €25m.

“Since 90% of that billion Euro sales goes back to the community, it means good news for the 1.4 million players we have each week, the thousands of good causes up and down the country who received over €300m - which is also a record - as well as the 5,000 lottery agents who received €55m in commissions,” he said.

He said the extended rollover wasn’t the only factor leading to the record sales, noting that growth was actually faster in the first half of the year than the second, when the rollover happened.

Unclaimed prizes

Mr Algeo confirmed that 1.6% - around €16m - of tickets sales last year was spent on advertising but insisted the company cannot put the money back into prizes instead.

“As regards our advertising spend, under the terms of our licence, we must use any prizes which are unclaimed by the public in order to promote the National Lottery,” he said.

He said the that was lowest amount of unclaimed ticket sales the Lotto has seen under its licence.

“The amount of unclaimed prizes as a function of sales continues to go down and that is as we get better and better at advertising that winning tickets have been unclaimed,” he said.

In all €585.9m was won in prizes last year.

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