Page 45 - merged.pdf

•Four Greatest Licences to Print Money 25

shareholders were also the suppliers of products, services and expertise to the con-
sortium. The current shareholders are as follows.

1 Cadbury Schweppes brings marketing and sales support with their extensive
knowledge of the UK retailing scene.

2 Royal Mail Enterprises are the largest retailer of National Lottery tickets.
3 De La Rue has the expertise and ability to print the high security materials

necessary.
4 Fujitsu Services – at the beginning the Fujitsu subsidiary ICL produced the

lottery terminals and did the huge training job. They had to train more than
34,000 retailer staff in 10,000 retailers.
5 Thales Electronics are providers of electronic products and advanced systems.

The figures for the half year to September 2002 make sobering reading for the share-
holders. From a sales turnover of some £2.276 billion, down 5.2% overall, half
went back to the punters as prize money. 27% went to Good Causes (Camelot
always spells Good Causes with capital letters), 12% in tax, 5% to the retailers and
approximately 6% covered operating costs. This leaves a modest 1% as the bottom
line profit of the business. This modesty is in better perspective when you note that
the profit before tax of £17.9 million was all distributed to the shareholders.

Camelot publicity makes much of the fact that they had an awful lot to do in a
very short time when the lottery was launched, and that the penalties for being late
were heavy. Quite so, but the risk that people would not flock to a well-advertised
opportunity to get away from the humdrum of work was historically quite low.

In 2001, against very stiff competition, Camelot won the renewal of their li-
cence to run the National Lottery in a bitter and political campaign. They changed
the name of the main draw to Lotto; but at this time they are failing to reverse a
sharp decline in their sales. Maybe people are catching on to the real chances of
becoming a multi-millionaire and telling their boss where to stuff their job.