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The three £10 National Lottery scratchcards currently on sale – the £4 Million Black Scratchcard, the £4 Million Red Scratchcard and the Diamond 7 Scratchcard – will be the last 3 scratchcards ever £10 scratchcards to be sold in local stores.
After hearing a rumour that shopkeepers who sell National Lottery scratchcards in store, had already been told this, we got in touch with National Lottery to hear if it was true.
A reply from National Lottery on twitter said:
Why are they being removed?
Although we don’t know for definite, and are yet to receive any response we’ve put forward to National Lottery, we suspect it is because of one of the following:
1 – £4 Million Jackpot won with a stolen bank card
Recently, a story hit the news about a two friends who purchased a £4 Million Red Scratchcard and won the jackpot. The only issue was that they used a credit card that neither of them owned.
This story doesn’t seem to be getting resolved any time soon, and National Lottery have not gone public with what is happening/ happened.
Maybe they’ve had legal issues with this story?
2 – Licensing Issues
If you’ve ever noticed, you’ll know that National Lottery only ever has 2 different £10 scratchcards out at once. Yes, there are multiple coloured versions of the £4 million scratchcard, but this just counts as one game. And the other is the Diamond 7 scratchcard.
In fact, Camelot, have to apply for a special license from the gambling commission for the £10 scratchcards – the license for the Diamond 7 scratchcard form earlier this year can be found here.
Rather interestingly, one of the statements from this site says:
“The approval is granted on the basis that Camelot will undertake regular monitoring of the game and our ability to withdraw the game at any point, should there be player protection concerns.“
3 – Poor Sales
This point is purely a guess, we have no data to support or deny it. However, the £10 scratchcards are not particularly interesting or unique, and offer little more in terms of gameplay that the vast array of £5 scratchcards.
Given the fact you win £1 million on a £5 scratchcard (the same price as the Diamond 7 Scratchcard), why would you bother playing it?
When will they be removed from sale?
Currently, there are 3 remaining £10 scratchcards still on sale, and they will eventually be removed as all the jackpot prizes are won, or they are all sold.
If you win a prize, that is not a jackpot, you will still be given additional time to claim your prize once the game has closed.
All expiring scratchcards are shared on this National Lottery page. For example, although the £4 Million Blue scratchcard has closed, you still have until 5th October 2019 to claim your prize.
12th August 2019 Update
In response to a request for more information from National Lottery on twitter, they stated that the decision for removing the £10 scratchcards was that unlike other National Lottery products, the £10 scratchcards over-index amongst problem gamblers.
This was confirmed in a message from Greg Deacon – Head of Field Sales at Camelot – who said:
“The reason is that our player protection programme has shown that, unlike other National Lottery products, £10 scratchcards over-index among problem gamblers – so we’ve decided to stop selling these products once stocks already in shops have run out.”
Greg Deacon, National Lottery
This message was also repeated on their twitter account:
This basically translates to the fact the problem gamblers are more likely to spend their money on £10 scratchcards than other games.
It also means that National Lottery are doing what is best for them in terms of keeping their licence, even though it will likely impact on their profits, and hence future scratchcard prize payouts!
Last Updated: 21:00 12th August 2019
This article will be updated as more information becomes available. Please contact us or leave a comment below if you have information.
