London 2012 Fund Swells
Last Updated: Wednesday 7th August 2013, 14:51
Camelot, the operator of the UK National Lottery, recently announced that returns to the Olympic Lottery Distribution Fund (OLDF) rose for the fourth quarter in a row. Official figures show that returns to the OLDF in the first quarter of the current financial year were £13.4 million. This is 28% higher than the £10.4 million returns of the previous quarter, and far more than the £3.2 million and £2.7 million returned in the second and third quarters of the last financial year, and brings the current total of funds raised (to 1 July 2006) to £29.7 million.
Camelot has pledged to contribute up to £1.5 billion to help fund the London 2012 Games infrastructure, with £750 million of this amount coming from a series of games assigned specifically for this purpose.
The first game in this series - the Go For Gold scratch card - was successfully launched in July of last year. Then, in Quarter 1 of this year, other games followed - £100k Love, Win Gold, £250k Yellow, Dash For Cash, £100k Purple and Bee Lucky. Dream Number, launched several weeks ago, was the first National Lottery draw designated to the London 2012 project. In addition to all of this, all Good Cause contributions from the sale of Camelot's online Instant Win games are being assigned to the OLDF.
Dianne Thompson, Chief Executive of Camelot, says: "We are delighted that sales of tickets for designated games in support of London 2012 continue to see strong growth, underlining the tremendous enthusiasm with which National Lottery players have embraced the opportunity to help raise the funding required to stage the London Games.
"This is a great start - but rest assured we will not be resting on our laurels. We're very encouraged by players' response to our new Dream Number game - which created more than 210,000 winners in its first week alone. We look forward to building on this achievement - offering our players the chance to win some fantastic prizes as well as getting behind London 2012."
