'No plans' for £2 Lotto ticket

Sales across all lottery games have fallen 5.5%

The company which runs the National Lottery has denied it is planning to double the price of its tickets.

Camelot said on Tuesday it "had no plans" to increase the price of tickets for the main Lotto draw from £1 to £2.

It followed a report by the Daily Mirror that the company planned a price hike in a desperate attempt to improve flagging profits.

There are already scratch cards which cost £2 and £3 and a one-off ticket at Christmas costing £5.

A spokeswoman for Camelot pointed out the cost of the £1 tickets for the National Draw have not changed since the game started in 1994.

The company is under pressure because sales on all its games have fallen by 5.5% in the past year.

Olympic costs

In addition, it has been asked to provide £750m to fund London's bid to host the Olympics.

At the moment, the main draw makes up 74% of all sales.

But chief executive Dianne Thompson predicted earlier this year that the figure would fall to 49% of overall sales by 2005, as people took part in draws via the internet and mobile phones.

Plans to develop the site in the East End of London for the Olympics were unveiled on Tuesday.

London will not find out if its bid has been successful until June 2005, but tickets for the special Olympics games will go on sale next year.

Penny tickets

The company is also planning to introduce a Penny Lottery, which could run every day.

Anyone with all eight numbers will win the top prize of £25,000, with up to a maximum of five winners every night.

Those with fewer numbers could win one of 40,000 other prizes on offer.

Other, non-Olympic, games will include a daily game with prizes from £5 to £30,000 and Lotto on the internet, both beginning this autumn.

And a European game jackpot, held in conjunction with French and Spanish lottery games, will have jackpots of up to £30m.