National Lottery to launch new big money TV game show

The National Lottery is planning to launch a new weekly game show on RTÉ television early next year in a bid to boost sales.

The show, which promises big cash prizes, will run once a week on a weekend evening, with contestants being drawn from winning scratch card entries.

It will be separate from the lottery’s popular Winning Streak show, which is watched by up to 250,000 viewers a week.

Details of the show and its celebrity presenter will be revealed by RTÉ next week, with the show commencing in January.

The move to have a second weekly show is part of a bid to drum up sales by the new operators, Premier Lotteries Ireland (PLI).

PLI formally took control of the newly privatised business this week after paying the second instalment of its €405 million outlay for the licence.

The consortium, comprising An Post and the Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan - owners of UK operator Camelot, is banking on growing the business, in part through a revamped online portal, to claw back its investment.

To do this, it must first arrest several years of the declining sales which have seen turnover drop from a 2008 high of €840 million to €685 million last year.

In tandem with the new TV game show, PLI is expected to launch of a series online games next year, exploiting the easing of restrictions on its digital arm.

A new operating system, which will facilitate the expansion of the lottery’s existing suite of digital games, was successfully plugged in this week.

Updating the technology, which incorporated a new network of some 3,700 in-store ticket terminals, was part of the terms of the new licence.

The machines, which use an optical reading technology and issue green rather than yellow tickets, are expected to reduce waiting times in stores.