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From 21st November 2018 onwards, the main Lotto will again change radically as follows:
| Feature | Old Main Lotto | New Main Lotto |
|---|---|---|
| Jackpot rollovers | Limited to £22m and then rolls down to highest winning tier after that |
Limited to 5 and then rolls down to all lower tiers after that |
| 5+bonus prize | Variable (typically <£100,000) | Fixed (£1,000,000, ~£1,200,000 with a rolldown) |
| 5-match prize | Variable (typically <£1,500) | Fixed (£1,750, ~£10,500 with a rolldown) |
| 4-match prize | Variable (typically <£120) | Fixed (£140, ~£500 with a rolldown) |
| 3-match prize | Fixed (£25) | Fixed (£30, ~£100 with a rolldown) |
| Raffle | 1 winner of £1m and 20 winners of £20,000 | Raffle completely scrapped |
Coming in 2019:
A new game where the jackpot winner will receive a "four-figure income"
every month for 25 years.
Euro Millions change (possibly also November 2018):
One Euro Millions Millionaire Raffle £1m winner instead of the current two.
It's some interesting changes proposed by Camelot, but I don't think they go far enough. I'm glad, though, to see the back of the raffle, particularly the completely and utterly useless 20 grand raffle prizes.
The fixed £1m prize for 5+bonus is possibly because it's the top prize in many draws since the lottery switched to 59 balls and yet, very embarrassingly, it's often under 100 grand. A bit like when Euro Millions becomes "Euro Thousands" when the 5+2 prize isn't won.
As I've been saying for decades, the jackpot prize pool should always have spread its rollover amount across all prize tiers for the next draw, right from day one. Couple that with unlimited rollovers and you'd have decent prizes across many consecutive rollover draws, with a jackpot that would still be increasing but obviously not as quickly as it currently does. Sadly, Camelot will only roll down to all categories when they hit 5 consecutive rollovers (and then the jackpot gets reset), which just simply isn't good enough.
Sadly, they're keeping the absolutely awful "free Lucky Dip if you match 2 numbers" tier. This was - and remains - an idea without any merit whatsoever. It's not a prize, because you're 98%+ likely to lose with the free ticket in the draw it's entered into.
Personally, I think I'm a bit fed up of buying an additional Lotto ticket for every rollover draw and now that a 5-rollover draw has substantially better lower tier prizes, from the change onwards, I'll only be buying a second ticket for the 5-rollover draws.
You can read more about these changes at the official site.
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