Lotto Number Crunching

The UK lotto has been in existence since 1994 and is the fifth most played lottery in the world. To celebrate this enormously popular game, we’ve done some number crunching to give you a flavour of what our beloved lottery is all about.

40
40 is the most frequently drawn number in the UK lotto, appearing 299 times since 1994. The number 23 is not far behind having been drawn 297 times.

13
If you disregard the numbers 50-59 which are relatively recent additions, then 13 and 20 are the least frequently drawn lottery balls by some margin – they’ve only appeared 230 times each. In this sense 13 is most definitely an unlucky number and should be avoided at all costs (we jest of course).

13 is also the number of official draw machines used by Camelot. Their names are Amethyst, Arthur, Galahad, Garnet, Guinevere, Lancelot, Merlin, Moonstone, Opal, Pearl, Sapphire, Topaz and Vyvyan. However, only four are currently used regularly

4
The amount of times a lottery machine has gone on the blink. Thus far, only Arthur and Merlin have suffered technical difficulties, which occurred in 2011, 2012 and 2013. Not bad going if you consider how many draws there have been…

2215
There have been 2215 lottery draws since 1994 which have generated 4,400 winners. More than £50 billion has so far been paid out.

42,008,610
These eight digits represent the biggest lotto jackpot of all. They were drawn on 6 January 1996 and claimed by three anonymous winners who each pocketed a cool £14,002,870.

720,152
These measly numbers are the smallest lotto jackpot. To make matters even worse, there were two winners who had to share the winnings. However, £360,076 is certainly not to be sniffed at, unless of course you’re already a multi-millionaire.

133
133 signifies the largest number of jackpot winners for a single draw. Each winner picked the numbers 7, 17, 23, 32, 38 and 42 which were pulled out of the bag on 14 January 1995. Every one of this happy group probably thought they’d bagged the £16,293,830 jackpot. In actual fact they’d ‘only’ won £122,510.

45,057,474
There are now 45,057,474 number combinations in each lotto draw compared to 13,983,816 before the 2015 changes. Theoretically you could buy up all these number combinations, as did Stefan Mandel in the Virginia State Lottery. But apart from the fact that Camelot doesn’t permit this, you’d also have to fork out close to a billion pounds.

5
This is the number of licenses awarded to Camelot since 1994. Although there’s been some competition from the likes of Richard Branson, Camelot has managed to hang on to its prized asset from the very beginning.

2500
The cost in GBP of each set of official lottery balls used by Camelot. They’re sourced from a New Jersey company by the name of Smart Play National which is where the official draw machines are also purchased.

59
The number of balls in a UK lotto draw. The previous number of 49 was changed by Camelot in 2015 due to declining profits.

36
This is the amount in billions which Camelot has given to good causes since 1994. The money has been distributed to over 500,000 projects across the United Kingdom.