Price rise gamble for Lotto bosses

With household budgets so pressed, will people still buy a Lotto ticket now they have doubled in price? Increasing charges and complexity may put players off.

Already Twitter and Facebook are full of posts saying people will stop playing. The problem is that if players do drop out, the Lotto revamp plan will backfire.

This is the first price rise since 1994, but players may be angry that it goes beyond inflation. If ticket prices had gone up with the cost of living, they would now be £1.67 not £2.

Although Lotto bosses are selling this by saying prizes will rise - though some payouts will actually decrease - and rise by a large percentage. Getting five numbers plus the bonus ball will move from £100,000 to £50,000.

Read: New lottery prices will fund bigger wins, says organiser

What increases the risk for Lotto is that it's rival The Health Lottery will not be rising ticket prices and will start to heavily promote it's £1 charges.

It doesn't help that when players try to discover more about the changes this morning they get a message saying "National Lottery online services are temporarily unavailable as we are currently making some exciting changes to Lotto."

Six million people win some sort of prize each week, £40m a week is raised for good causes and two thirds of the adult population play regularly.

Every week they sell us tickets - and hope. Now that comes at a higher price.