Allwyn Participant Protection Conference - Andrew Rhodes speech
23 September 2025
This speech was delivered by Chief Executive Andrew Rhodes at the Allwyn Participant Protection Conference on Tuesday 23 September 2025.
Please note: This is the speech as drafted and may slightly differ from the delivered version.
Hello everyone and thank you for both that introduction and your own comments kicking off today. I think it's fair to say Andria is always incredibly enthusiastic about the future of the National Lottery every time I speak to her, and I think we all saw that just now. Given some of the meetings I get to have as the Chief Executive of a regulator, you may be surprised to hear that boundless enthusiasm isn’t always what I’m used to. But then Andria is of course right to be enthusiastic about the National Lottery. The National Lottery is a national institution, a national treasure and one that we at the Gambling Commission take great pride in being a custodian of.
By being in this room today everyone here is showing they know participant protection is important in and of itself. But I think it is the status of the National Lottery that makes participant protection and today’s event so significant as well. As I hope to make clear today, it’s just not possible for player protection to be an add-on to the National Lottery – it has to run through it like a stick of rock. But why is that? Well in my time with you today, I want to explain to you where the National Lottery sits within everything else we regulate. I’ll talk you through the numbers and how the National Lottery’s success doesn’t go unnoticed by others.
I’ll briefly touch on how the National Lottery has changed over time, why it will always get more scrutiny and why this matters. And I will finish by returning to the importance of getting player protection right: that it is, simply put, the right thing to do. I’ll make clear why this is so crucial, not just to us in this room but everyone up and down the country too. But first where does the National Lottery stand today?
It will no doubt come as no surprise to everyone in the room today that at the Gambling Commission we gather quite a lot of information about the National Lottery. In the last financial year the National Lottery raised over £1.8 billion, a welcome rise on the year before. And already this year, in the first quarter, another £485 million was raised. Again, more than the year before. We, like the Distributors and like Allwyn, want more but let’s just step back for a moment and think about the scale of change that money is able to deliver in communities up and down this country. For our sports clubs, our local museums and our historic sites and much more besides. Many of you will of course know these figures but you may be less familiar with other data the Commission collects.
In our Gambling Survey for Great Britain, we track the participation rates for all products we regulate, including the National Lottery. And consistently, the National Lottery is clear out in front for participation. In our most recent figures for the period of September 2024 to January 2025, 29 per cent of the over 5,000 respondents had bought a National Lottery draw ticket in the last 4 weeks. National Lottery scratchcards had been bought by 11 per cent of respondents and TNL instant win games had been played by 6 per cent per cent. To put this in context, betting combined - whether on sports or other events - had a participation rate of 10 per cent from our respondents in the same period. The gambling market in Great Britain when measured in Gross Gambling Yield – stakes minus prizes in layman's terms – was worth £15.6 billion between April 2023 to March 2024. Of that £3.3 billion was the National Lottery. So the scale of the National Lottery in many ways puts it in a category all of its own.
The numbers I’ve referenced all tell us the scale of the National Lottery and its importance across the country also. But whilst the National Lottery I think it’s fair to say immediately became nationally significant when it was launched, it looked radically different back then.
In 1994 when we were all told ‘it could be you’ the National Lottery was a single draw based game a week. Oh and as an aside, I suspect I’m not the only one who felt my age as well as nostalgia when that slogan came back recently.
What initially made it attractive to the public: the offer of a life changing win whilst helping good causes across the country remains at the heart of its appeal today and I know Allwyn know this and want to capitalise on it. But nothing can stand still – especially in a competitive and changing world. So over time the National Lottery added more draws, it added scratchcards and it added different games on top of that. This means that today, more than 30 years on, the National Lottery looks very different even if at its core, it still happily has the same attraction.
But those changes, when combined with the scale the National Lottery operates at, bring with them pressure. Every added product, every increased opportunity for players also changes the challenges. It can, if change is careless increase risks and it can impact the relationship with players. This pressure is all the greater because of the added scrutiny the National Lottery attracts. Again, its scale, the numbers of people who are part of it, either as players, winners or recipients of funding, mean that the National Lottery is only ever one slip away from headlines. Recently Allwyn successfully managed a huge technical upgrade of both the retail technology and back office systems for the National Lottery. Its success is a good news story for all of us. But I know that there were those circling that project waiting to see if it went wrong. This scrutiny might not be fair but it is real and it is not going anywhere.
Your agenda today offers important opportunities to hear more about AI and digital ID, two areas where technology is advancing rapidly but where I can tell you as a regulator, where the capabilities have not yet settled down and where the many potential advantages can also still bring with them risk.
Some may be asking why the National Lottery gets this added scrutiny? And to answer this question I need to return to a point I made at the start. And that is that the National Lottery is not only a national asset but frankly a national institution.
I don’t use the phrase national institution lightly either. One of the nice parts of my job and that of some of my fellow Executives is that when we’re out and about visiting those we regulate we also occasionally get to engage with and see the work of some of the good causes that the National Lottery funds. Just a few weeks ago, our Deputy Chief Executive was able to see the power of National Lottery funding at the Ulster museum in Belfast where it has funded a powerful exhibition about the Troubles and Beyond. We see that difference the National Lottery makes up and down the country and so do the British public.
But being put on a pedestal can be a tricky spot. And it inevitably means one wrong move can see you topple. The same is true of the National Lottery. National institutions are held to a higher standard than others. The National Lottery is held to a higher standard than other products and its reputation must be seen in this light. And it must be protected in this light.
This is in everyone’s interest. And it’s another reason why player protection is so critical. The great British public do not want harm coming from the things they treasure and ultimately they won’t tolerate it either. But of course that potential for harm is itself what makes participant protection so vital.
The National Lottery, is one of the lowest risk products I and the Commission regulate. But that doesn’t mean participant protection can be an afterthought. Because there will always be a risk, however small. And that risk can and sadly sometimes does lead to terrible harms. So the National Lottery – especially given its status - must make every effort to counter that risk.
Allwyn’s commitment to getting participant protection right – through investment, working with partners, training staff and retailers and events like today is a both vital and welcome. It’s one of the reasons I’m so pleased to support this event today.
Another element of getting participant protection right is of course seeking out and listening to those who have experienced gambling related harms. So returning to today’s agenda, the opportunity to listen to those with lived experience of harm is an opportunity I encourage you all to make the most of.
Something I didn’t say earlier is that our statistics tell us that the model of the National Lottery is one that others are keen to replicate – the offer of a life changing win whilst raising money for good causes is an appealing one. And outside what we regulate, we see this as well with the success in recent years of prize draws. Were there to be missteps in participant protection, if the National Lottery were to all of a sudden be seen as higher risk, these would-be competitors may well capitalise.
And that is just one more reason why prioritising participant protection matters. That is why everyone making the effort to attend today, at this event matters.
The National Lottery is a national institution – it is a jewel in the crown of this country – supporting good causes up and down the UK and creating life changing wins for many. And the National Lottery has changed a great deal over the last 30 years, whilst still maintaining that status. If it is to continue to succeed, it will need to change again over the coming years and I know Allwyn are committed to investing in that future.
At the heart of that future though must remain participant protection. Today is a good start on that. You all attending supports that priority. So thank you from me and I hope you all have an insightful day.
Thank you and I am happy to take any questions.
Last updated: 23 September 2025
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