Financing The Olympics from The British National Lottery

For twenty years, a British woman swimmer had not won a gold medal in the Olympics and then at Beijing in 2008, Rebecca Adlington took away two, breaking a record time, which had also stood for twenty years, in the eight hundred metres as she did so.

Rebecca believes the support she received from the UK lottery draw was key to her success. The money she and other athletes received enabled them access to first class training, coaching and medical support. Of course they are all looking to the next Games, those at London in 2012, and the National Lottery has confirmed its continued support.

For the 2008 Beijing Olympics the British National Lottery allocated £265 million in the World Class Pathway scheme. This was the initiative that supported the athletes and was vindicated by the haul of over 140 medals brought home by the sportsmen and women involved. With its continuing funding, the National Lottery authorities are expecting an even better haul from the London 2012 Games.

The Government has appointed a body, the Olympic Lottery Distributor, to oversee the distribution of funds. The Distributor will have a total income of £1.83 billion from the UK lottery draw to support the London Olympics and Paralympics.

This money comes directly from the stake money paid by lottery players. Twenty-eight percent of the money is allocated to good causes and five percent goes direct to the Olympic fund.

The facilities required for the London 2012 Games will be partly financed by £2.2 billion from British National Lottery funds. Not only will this have the short-term benefit of the Olympics themselves but will also represent a long-term legacy for the people of London and the UK as a whole. The funds invested in the infrastructure will not be lost however. According to the Government, once the Olympics and Paralympics are over, much of the land will be sold and any profits paid back into the lottery fund for use on other projects.

17000 athletes and officials will be housed in the Olympic village during the competitions and 6000 during the Paralympics. Once the Games are over the area will then be used to add to the regeneration of the London borough of Stratford and will provide 4000 new homes, leisure facilities and office buildings. A new shopping centre will also be constructed.

The British National Lottery is, also sponsoring other projects related to the Olympics, yet probably not so well known. For example, Unlimited is a project providing opportunities in arts and sports to deaf and disabled residents. The lottery fund has donated £3 million to support this as part of the 2012 London Cultural Olympiad.

Previous Olympics have proved to be expensive affairs so the organisers of the 2012 London Olympics must be pleased to have the help of UK lottery draw funding. In any case, there is no doubt Rebecca Adlington is grateful. She thanked the players of the British National Lottery in a recent interview.

To find out more about the operation of the lotteries, go to UK lottery draw

How Good Causes Benefit From The UK Lottery Draw

The entries will close for the UK National Lottery Awards very soon. The awards recognise the initiatives financed from the lottery funds and highlight that feature of the UK lottery draw that is so easily overlooked. Each week after the lottery draw, players either celebrate their success or complain about their failure. Yet every week there are other winners: the funds from the draw benefit various charities and good causes.

Television personality Sally Lindsey and a group of ladies from the Women’s Royal Voluntary service promoted the awards at the London Transport Museum. The choice of venue was deliberate, as both the WRVS and the museum have received funds from the British national lottery draw.

In the Welsh county of Pembrokeshire, St Davids cathedral had originally been constructed in 1181 on the site of an existing building. In its history, the church has experienced an earthquake, attacks from marauding soldiers and continual erosion from the elements. It has been a long struggle for survival. Recently, however, the situation has been helped a little following a grant from the National Lottery, which enabled the rebuilding of the north porch and the south cloister.

An ITV network television programme, The Peoples Millions, also distributes lottery funds. For example, Rowan Gate Primary School in Northamptonshire successfully applied to the programme for £50 000 to improve the school’s physiotherapy pool and open access to the pool for disabled children.

A more extensive initiative that has benefited from the UK lottery draw fund is a series of projects created to recognise the role servicemen played in the Second World War. One part of this, The Heroes Return, gave £17 million to enable veterans of the war to return to the sites of their campaigns. 58 veterans of the Royal Navy used this to return to Penang and Singapore.


Another part of the same scheme was the Their Past Your Future project which gave school children the chance to study the war and to actually meet the veterans. The Home Front Recall initiative also donated grants ranging from £500 to £20 000 to schemes commemorating the people and events of the Second World War.

The lottery was launched in 1994 and, since that time, around £25 million a week has been raised for charities. This means that a total of £24 billion has been raised to date.

It is clear, therefore, that in it’s 15 year life, the UK lottery draw has made a great impact on a wide section of British society. In particular, 28 per cent of the grants have been received by the most deprived areas of British society with tremendous results.

The lottery can too easily be seen purely in terms of winning and losing of money and yet there is no doubt it has effects that are far more positive.


To find out more about the lotteries, please visit UK lottery draw.

7 Benefits Of Using Elottery To Access UK Lottery Draw

Now would seem an odd time to be considering a new business with the uncertain global financial situation and yet some businesses actually prosper in difficult times. Finding the traditional sources of income have let them down, many people start to look for alternatives.

One such business type involves working with lotteries and can prove to be a good investment of time and money if the correct route is followed. Bear in mind there is a huge market of people who already play the lottery: 70% of the UK population play regularly, for example.

There is denying that a lottery is still a lottery with the odds stacked against you winning the jackpot, but if you join a syndicate the odds are reduced and indeed you stand a good chance of winning at least something from the smaller prizes. I have even seen it written that the unstable state of the economy makes investing in lotteries almost more attractive than the stock markets.

Of most interest is the Elottery syndicate group. Elottery first started operating in 2002, its founders being Len Fitzgerald and Tom Brodie. It covers the UK lottery draw and the European lottery and has members in some 127 countries around the world.

There are seven distinct reasons why the Elottery system is attractive:

1. The business costs nothing to join.
2. You have the opportunity to build your own group of players and you then earn a commission every time one of those members play a lottery. This gives you the opportunity to create a useful regular income.
3. The syndicates are devised in such a way that each has 49 members. This manages to increase the odds of winning any prize in the lottery by an amazing 733% in the UK lottery draw and 3600% in the Euro millions.
4. The draws covered include not only the UK lottery draw and the European lottery but the Spanish Superdraw and the El Gordo lottery too.
5. The Elottery organization provides full support through your website and that includes promotional material, customer support, email marketing campaigns, payment processing and online marketing support.
6. There is also full training available through the website as well as personal support. Regular conferences are arranged both online and offline. Existing members are happily building groups online and offline too.
7. Once you become a member unexpected benefits appear. Twice a week a draw for £1000 is made. This is known as the ‘Grab A Grand’ draw and has the interesting twist that not only does a member of Elottery win the money but also another £1000 is paid to the person who brought that person in. Activities within the business (including entries into the lotteries) also earn ‘Golden Ticket’ points, which are eligible for regular draws for several useful prizes and a yearly draw for a car. It seems likely that the value of these awards will increase as Elottery grows.

Elottery has been operating for eight years and has shown itself to be the most attractive method to bring the lottery programmes onto the Internet. If you are considering starting a business or just wanting to play the UK lottery draw and the European lottery, Elottery syndicates are well worth a look.

Find out more about Elottery syndicates at UK lottery draw.