UK National Lottery operator Camelot is taking their brand onto mobile devices. Players are now able to buy tickets through smart phones with Richard Bateson, marketing director at Camelot UK Lotteries, explaining: “There’s no need to remember a new address; if your mobile is supported, we will recognise that you are on a smartphone and will re-direct you to the mobile version of the website.”
He added: “This latest initiative is another step in our strategy for long-term responsible growth, which aims to enable more people to play at times that suit them but with each of them spending relatively little.”
Camelot are hoping the new site makes it easier for all players to take part in the lottery.
Chief executive of the same firm, Dianne Thompson, is worried about the company’s future. She issued a warning to the government in an interview with Third Sector magazine that Richard Desmond’s Health Lottery could signal the Camelot brand’s demise.
“We think what Desmond is doing is illegal, but if it turns out that it is legal then he has found a very clever loophole in the law that he has exploited,” Thompson said.
She continued: “It shouldn’t be our job to take this legal challenge on, but the government isn’t going to do anything and the Gambling Commission isn’t going to do anything,” she added.
The legal loophole mentioned relates to the fact the government established the Camelot brand as a national monopoly back in 1993. Desmond’s Health Lottery skirts the rules by operating as a group of 51 society lotteries and as thus isn’t one national entity.
