The National Lottery is now back online, with players able to head to stores and online to buy tickets for tonight’s draw. Services had been offline since Saturday night due to a major systems overhaul, but things are fully operational once again. The National Lottery said its terminals came back online in stores at 9am, with a shop in Swansea selling the first ticket for the Set For Life draw.\u00a0This was then followed by the National Lottery website and app, which was back online at 9.30am – the first purchase on the app was a EuroMillions ticket bought by a player in Kent.<\/p>\n
Allwyn, who now operates the National Lottery, says the rare closure is to help it install important upgrades to its systems, that is something it says hasn’t been done for over 10 years.<\/p>\n
The shutdown started immediately after the main Lotto draw. Along with ticket sales ending, the Lottery also said players wouldn’t be able to claim prizes or log in to check their accounts.<\/p>\n
A quick trip to the National Lottery website over the weekend showed an error message, with gamers told, “Some of our services are unavailable this weekend as we upgrade the technology that powers The National Lottery.<\/p>\n
“You don’t need to cross your fingers \u2013 everything will be up and running soon.”<\/p>\n
Explaining more about the outage, the National Lottery said, “We’re spending this weekend upgrading the technology that powers The National Lottery. These upgrades will help us to modernise The National Lottery, which hasn’t had a significant technology upgrade since 2009. It’s all about improving your experience over the coming months and years.<\/p>\n
\u201cFollowing Saturday’s draws, our website, app, and in-store terminals will be unavailable until Monday. This means you won’t be able to buy tickets, claim prizes, or log in during this time. Your account details and data will remain safe and secure.”<\/p>\n
Although it’s unclear exactly what changes are taking place, Czech-based operator of the Lottery, Allwyn says the work includes the delivery of more than 30 new systems.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to deliver The National Lottery that the UK deserves,\u201d said Allwyn chief exectuve, Andria Vidler.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The National Lottery is now back online, with players able to head to stores and online to buy…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":317419,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[51,14982,3190,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-317418","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-national-lottery","10":"tag-tech-section","11":"tag-uk","12":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114971132771030749","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/317418","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=317418"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/317418\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/317419"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=317418"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=317418"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=317418"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}