Monday lottery sends viral apology for first draw hiccup

Monday, the new internet and telephone-based lottery game, is launching a viral campaign apologising for the problems it faced during its launch.

The game, which launched earlier this month, is pitched as a “fairer” alternative to the Camelot-run National Lottery, with more money going to charity and better odds for players.

However, the first draw, which was scheduled to take place on Monday May 8 at 8pm, was delayed for more than four hours after higher-than-expected demand left its website struggling to cope with the volume of traffic.

The problems saw it fall well short of its weekly target of &£10m in ticket sales, meaning that the five charities that had hoped to share &£3m between them were left with just &£30,000 each.

To encourage players to persevere, the campaign, developed by London-based agency Us, shows sales director Andrew Williams “punishing” website director Steve Freeman.

Monday is currently embroiled in a war of words with National Lottery operator Camelot. It claims that players have a one in 500,000 chance of winning its jackpot, which is 27 times better than the National Lottery.