Creative Lotteries gets the charity go-ahead

Creative Lotteries, the company set up to supply own-label lottery products to retailers, has been awarded an external lottery manager’s certificate by the Gaming Board.

The certificate enables the holder to run lotteries on behalf of charities, and is only the fifth such licence granted in the UK. Others are held by Littlewoods, Systems International, Letters Galore and Inter Lotto, which is planning to use it to launch Keno-style games.

Creative Lotteries was set up by Steve Lemonides, a former executive at Inter Lotto. He has approached retailers such as Woolworths, John Menzies and betting chain Ladbroke to produce and market own-label scratchcards. Under the scheme, the retailer would get commission of 20 per cent, four times greater than the five per cent offered by Camelot’s Instants, and more than the 12 per cent offered by Littlewoods.