Allwyn Participant Protection Conference - Sarah Gardner speech
02 October 2026
This speech was delivered by acting chief executive Sarah Gardner at the Allwyn Participant Protection Conference on Thursday 01 October 2026.
Please note: This is the speech as drafted and may slightly differ from the delivered version.
Thank you everyone and thank you for that introduction. My name is Sarah Gardner and I am currently the Acting Chief Executive of the Gambling Commission, normally the Deputy Chief Executive. Stepping up again this year to be Acting Chief Executive of course brings different challenges and opportunities and I’m delighted to say, joining you all here today for the second Participant Protection Conference is definitely one of the opportunities! Ever since I heard about Allwyn’s commitment to hold these events each year, I’ve been looking forward to the opportunity to attend one and so seeing everyone here today, and looking over the agenda, I’m really pleased to see that commitment fully fledged in reality.
Somebody else who I know is pleased to be here today and working on The National Lottery overall is of course the new Interim Chief Executive at Allwyn, Phil Walker. Phil, I’m looking forward to working with you in your new role. I also want to put on record again my thanks to Andria Vidler, the previous Chief Executive of Allwyn. For all the challenges that were encountered, Andria was always committed to transparent and collaborative engagement with me and with the Commission as a whole – a view I know Phil also has. I wish her well for the future.
And the future is very much what I want to talk about today. As I have already said, this event is an example of turning commitments into reality but it’s more than that: it is delivering progress. Turning commitments into reality has probably been a theme of the last twelve months for Allwyn as they begin to deliver on their plans to innovate The National Lottery and so I will touch on the achievements delivered so far. But when it comes to participant protection we all want progress too. All of us being here today is strong evidence that progress has been made. But of course, there is always more to do so I will reflect on that as well and how today’s agenda shines a light on how we can all play our part.
And I will also talk about why this all matters – why The National Lottery matters. I’ve said it before but The National Lottery is a national institution and so it is on all of us to make sure it stays that way. I mentioned earlier the idea of challenges and opportunities. Protecting and strengthening The National Lottery is clearly both and participant protection runs throughout both the challenge and the opportunity as well.
I’ve already said though, plenty of challenges have already been overcome and plenty of commitments have been delivered over the last year, but first, let’s take a moment to reflect on the progress made so far.
At the start of this year Allwyn delivered the largest tech upgrade of The National Lottery in its history. This was a crucial moment in the journey of the Fourth Licence and Allwyn’s stewardship of The National Lottery. And the ‘Digital Cutover’ as those of us working on it - and who spent more time thinking about it than was healthy - got used to calling it, was about far more than making sure the tech that supports The National Lottery was upgraded, as important as that was. It was the key gateway to the innovation of products that Allwyn wanted to begin. As the regulator of The National Lottery, the Gambling Commission has played our part, and we are pleased that we have been able to approve a number of new games or game changes. The introduction of Powerball is a clear sign of Allwyn’s ambition to innovate The National Lottery in order to raise Returns to Good Causes and one that we have welcomed.
Over the last 12 months where we have published Returns to Good Causes data, The National Lottery has raised £1.7 billion for Good Causes up and down the United Kingdom. The importance of this fundraising cannot be over-estimated. One of the happy parts of my job over the years has been to have the opportunity at times to visit some of the Good Causes that are funded through The National Lottery and see on the ground the benefit delivered. At the Gambling Commission we want to see more of that, of course. So do the Distributors and so do Allwyn. But it’s worth pausing for a minute and thinking about just how transformative that money already is to communities up and down this country. Nothing else in the UK delivers for Good Causes in the same way as The National Lottery does - for our sports clubs, our local museums, our historic sites and much more besides. It matters and so how The National Lottery operates and is perceived matters too. More on that in a moment.
Now the figures I just shared will be common knowledge to many of you will here today, but you may be less familiar with other data the Commission collects. Through our official statistics, the Gambling Survey for Great Britain (GSGB), we track the participation rates for all products we regulate, including the National Lottery. And the National Lottery is by far and away the product that people participate in when you look at those stats. In the GSGB Annual Report for 2025 that we published in the Summer, the most common gambling activity among all participants was The National Lottery – with 31 per cent of all participants saying they’d played it in the last four weeks. National Lottery scratchcards are played by 11 per cent and National Lottery online instant win games by 6 per cent as well. So the level of engagement with The National Lottery is considerable. Millions of people up and down the country are involved every week, people talk about it, they read about it and their communities are impacted by it. And that impact I talk of is again, the incredible impact of funding Good Causes. There is of course though another impact that can come from any gambling product and that is why today is so important. That impact is of course gambling harms.
Now consistently, as shown by the GSGB I was talking about a moment ago, The National Lottery is shown to be one of the lowest risk gambling products anyone can play. But that doesn't mean risks don’t exist and that protections aren’t needed. They are. And that brings me back to the important work Allwyn delivered earlier this year when they delivered that digital transformation of The National Lottery.
As part of that, Allwyn have successfully embedded new protections for every single player of The National Lottery who plays online or through the App. And Allwyn are also committed to working hard with retailers up and down the country to strengthen support for players at risk of harm in retail as well. This work to strengthen participant protection was an important commitment by Allwyn to the future of The National Lottery and it is great to see that commitment now being delivered and progressing. That’s not to say such changes happen seamlessly. There have been teething issues - we all know sometimes a step forward might be followed by a step back – but the commitment, and the progress that has followed so far, to player protection is real and is something that I and the Commission fully support.
But why do all these efforts to strengthen participant protection matter when The National Lottery is so low risk? Well for a start whilst at the Commission we know the risk of harms can never be fully removed, where more can be done and measures looked at, this is something we will always support, including Allwyn’s commitments to participant protection. But it goes further than this. I said earlier that The National Lottery is a national institution and I don’t say those words lightly. Having that status brings immense value to The National Lottery and its work. But it also brings with it the need to live up to higher standards and the reality of greater scrutiny. In essence it’s a high wire act where one wrong step can cause big problems.
The strength of The National Lottery, that it is played and trusted by millions of people across the country, can quickly turn if things go wrong. The public don’t want the things they trust and support in society to be causing harms. And trust forfeited is never easy to win back. So yes, The National Lottery is low risk and the work done by Allwyn, by retailers and beyond to keep National Lottery players safe is both important and welcome. But we can never rest and nor should we – we expect Allwyn and the National Lottery to be at the forefront in terms of determining and demonstrating best practice when it comes to protecting players – and indeed that is a key tenet within the Fourth Licence regulatory framework.
Which brings me back to today’s event.
Bringing everyone together to focus on participant protection in The National Lottery in this way is a really positive opportunity. By being here today you all show that you understand the importance of participant protection to The National Lottery and more widely to our communities. And there is plenty here today that will help shine a spotlight on what has been achieved already and what more we can all do. Looking at the agenda it’s clear there is plenty to look forward to, not least two more Sarah’s speaking today!
Joking aside though, I do hope you take something away from today in terms of how you look at participant protection. Whether it’s the important issues around neurodiversity being discussed after the next break, how product design can impact risk or what we’ve already heard on player understanding, today’s agenda is bringing some timely and valuable insights into the how we can all work more effectively to mitigate risks, protect players and therefore protect The National Lottery itself.
So thank you for listening to me today. I’m really pleased to have the opportunity to speak here today and support this initiative. Along with all of you here today, everyone at the Gambling Commission wants to see The National Lottery continue to succeed and continue to deliver impact for communities up and down the country. Participant protection must be at the core of that. And with the support of everyone here today I am sure that will continue to be the case.
Thank you.
Last updated: 2 October 2026
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