The continuity announcer mentioned at the end of the Euromillions update tonight that BBC One are to cease providing lottery updates from March 1st.
One does have to ask... why. Is it to free up promo space? Is there some weird licensing stuff related to the lottery updates? I can’t say I’ll exactly miss them though.
The problem with ITV is that they only do the Saturday update and BBC does every draw (Tues, Fri, Sat) from what I know. ITV have the capability to release the results in-house as seen with the Rugby World Cup lineups.
The ITV results is of course a paid advert by Camelot, who are free to pay for more slots, or not as they want. It doesn’t appear at the same time every week, and isn’t billed in the listings.
The BBC updates are of course billed as an item in the schedule, like a public service announcement.
Does anyone remember the days of the draws being simulcast on Radio 1/5 Live? That was dropped fairly quickly.
I’m surprised to see from Camelot figures that sales have increased, despite the price of tickets going up. I guess the fact you can buy online helps. Online sales is probably also the reason why draws now even take place on Christmas Day (never used to in the early days of the lottery).
Of course not only can you buy online but there are also multiple sources for checking results online so that’s probably another reason for dropping televised updates.
I think ITV needs to start doing what BBC did and that's a National Lottery show.
They could even put it on now that ITV has all this free space now.
I'm sure Camelot could put a bid in for the slots Ideal World currently pay for... 4 hour nightly editions of National Lottery Jet Set.
I mean just for the main saturday one and not the one's on tuesday which to this day I think shouldn't have done.
Again, why?
ITV aren’t in the business of giving free 15-60 minute promotions commercial organisations on Saturday night so unless Camelot want to throw a shed load of money at them it isn’t going to happen.