Charities come out a winner heading here
IT FELL tantalisingly short of being a Millionaire Maker but it is unlikely that the winner of this year’s Channel Islands Christmas Lottery will be moaning too much about the missing £23,000 –when he or she finally hands in their ticket.
For some lucky person all their Christmases have come at once.
Based on where the ticket was sold, the chances are that the winner is from Guernsey.
And given that the vast majority of tickets are still sold in ‘the other island’ – last year’s winner was the first from this island since 2014 – there has been good fortune all around.
On a much smaller scale, that festive feeling will be repeated among the 86 other winners, ranging from the second prize of £50,000 to the less-than-lifechanging, but far from unwelcome, £500.
But is this the turnaround in the Christmas Lottery’s fortunes that was required?
The total value of Christmas ticket sales across the two islands has been falling steadily since its peak in 2014.
Last year, overall ticket revenue dropped by £290,700 (9%) and the money given to charities in Guernsey fell by 11% to just £190,077.
Something was needed to spark up interest.
A survey in 2016 showed that islanders wanted a broader range of prizes on offer so the prize money outside of ‘the Big One’ was increased from £135,000 spread across 12 winners to £227,500 spread across 86.
On top of that were hundreds of thousands of scratch card prizes, with a handful worth up to £50,000.
To fund all that, the prize of each ticket was raised to £3.
But did it work?
The answer to that seems to depend on your definition of success.
While the top prize failed to make it past the million-pound mark the amount of money raised for charity has increased and total revenue is up by 10%. That’s not bad going in a difficult year when people are being careful with their money.
But none of that will matter to the owner of the lucky ticket bought from the L’Aumone Co-op.
He, or she, just has to find it.