It is regulated by the Gambling Commission, and is operated by Allwyn Entertainment, who took over from Camelot Group (who had been running the National Lottery since its inception) on 1 February 2024.

State lotteries were established by the Bank of England to generate money for 'good causes' and also to enable Britain to go to war.

Camelot claimed the hackers used a method called credential stuffing and said the attack appeared to have begun on 7 March.

[17][18] In February 2024, Allwyn Entertainment Ltd (part of the multinational KKCG company) took over all operations of the National Lottery, replacing the Camelot Group.

[27] In the same year on 1 June 2002, Camelot had introduced another special one-off jackpot-only draw to celebrate the Golden Jubilee of HM Queen Elizabeth II.

[32] The arrival of the "New Lotto" meant bigger jackpots with an estimated average of £1.1 million extra for Saturday's draw and £400,000 on Wednesday.

[34] The announcement and launch of the refreshed Lotto game caused controversy due to the price increase (dubbed as a "tax on the poor").

Since the rule changes in October 2015 there is also a "match 2" prize of a free lucky dip ticket for another draw, with odds of doing so at 1 in 10.

From this date, each prize level is a fixed amount per winner, similar to the Thunderball, and Set For Life draws.

Due to this payout structure on occasion there will be a larger allocated prize fund than required to pay out all winners.

Introduced in 1995, they are small pieces of card where an area has been covered by a thin layer of opaque latex that can be scratched off.

Some games are similar in format to scratchcards, with others involving more interactive play such as dice-rolling or matching special symbols.

It is made clear that the Instant Win games are solely based on luck and that no skill or judgement is involved.

[47] Odds of winning depend on the number of tickets sold for that particular draw in the UK, but are generally 1 in 1,900,000 on Tuesdays and 1 in 2,950,000 on Fridays.

In addition, from March 2005 to October 2005, the Daily Play draw was broadcast live on Challenge TV in the Glory Ball show, hosted by Jean Anderson, James McCourt, Jayne Sharp and Nikki Cowan.

Players would choose six years from a hundred or a lucky dip on their Big Draw/Christmas Millionaire Maker ticket for the first game.

28% of the price of £1 went to the Olympic Lottery Distribution Fund, and the scratchcards were intended to raise £750,000,000 towards the cost of staging the games.

Presented by Noel Edmonds, this was an hour long special, in which 49 contestants competed to become the first person to start the draw, the winner being 18-year-old Deborah Walsh.

For its first few years, the TV show took the title The National Lottery Live, and was presented mainly by Anthea Turner or Bob Monkhouse.

Other notable presenters during this period included Dale Winton, Carol Smillie, Terry Wogan and Ulrika Jonsson.

[60][61] The second part of the show featured the £10 Million Bonus Lotto Draw, and a musical performance by Anastacia with her new single.

From January 2013, the Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday draws were no longer broadcast, but could be viewed on the National Lottery's website; there was still a results update on BBC One at 10:45pm.

On 12 April 2018, it was announced that the televised Saturday night draw would be aired on ITV in a 90-second slot with Stephen Mulhern as the new host.

The prize fund is about 53% of revenue, with the remaining 10% going towards running costs and profits for the lottery organisers and ticket sellers.

It is the responsibility of the twelve distributors that make up The National Lottery Distribution Fund (NLDF), administered by the government Department for Culture, Media and Sport (which also sponsors the British Film Institute, which uses a portion of the National Lottery's funds to encourage film production).

[68] On 19 November 2014, the National Lottery celebrated 20 years of its Good Causes fund, which as of 2014, has raised £32 billion for charities and projects in the UK.

The National Lottery celebrated the 20th anniversary with the, 'Just Imagine' campaign which highlighted how the money has filtered through society to improve UK communities.

They conclude that, due to the time that would be required to achieve success, "except for millionaires and pooled syndicates, it is not possible to use the unpopular numbers in a scientific way to beat the lotto and have high confidence of becoming rich; these aspiring millionaires will also most likely be residing in a cemetery when their distant heirs reach the goal".

For all major prizes (£50,000 and over) approximately two weeks after the draw, if no claim has been received, the geographical area in which the ticket was purchased is released to the public.

The highest unclaimed prize distributed this way to date was a winning ticket worth £63,837,543.60 which was bought in the Stevenage and Hitchin area for the Euromillions draw of 8 June 2012.