When the Government privatised the National Lottery, and sold a 20-year licence to a new operator – Premier Lotteries Ireland (PLI) – the €405 million sale price far surpassed its expectations. PLI's successful bid was almost twice that of its nearest rival. Crucial to its success, it has been suggested, was access to superior technology at a cheaper price, ensuring significant cost savings for the operating company. However, last week's setback – the cancellation of the lotto draw, and its postponement for 24 hours – has raised questions about PLI's managerial competence and technical skills. In the 28-year history of the lottery, this is the first time a draw has been postponed. And worryingly, the technical failures that caused the postponement have occurred a matter of months after the new operator took over management of the lottery. This debacle has been both damaging for the company and its reputation, and damaging to the lottery. For it diminishes the public's confidence in the lottery, reduces its appeal, and therefore ticket sales.
The postponement of the draw could not have happened at a less opportune time, occurring in a week in which the jackpot exceeded €10 million – the highest in eight months. PLI has claimed a "telecommunications outage" – for which Telefonica's 3G network in Spain has been blamed – caused the disruption to service, which left customers unable to buy tickets for the draw. The company's chief executive, Dermot Griffin, has denied the lottery's own system was at fault. Nevertheless what has not been explained is why following the outage the alternative back-up system failed to function.
The operation of the national lottery is subject to regulation, and the newly appointed regulator should investigate what went wrong, and why, and ensure that such a major systems failure cannot recur. The lottery’s reputation has been damaged, and must be repaired to retain the confidence of the retailers who have installed some 3,700 ticket terminals, and the loyalty of the lottery customers that use them.