Olympic lottery plans unveiled (From This Is Local London)

Olympic lottery plans unveiled

3:11pm Wednesday 27th July 2005 in

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The top prize in the first lottery that will help fund the London 2012 Olympics is, appropriately, £2012.

The "Go for Gold" scratchcard is the first in a series of games that is expected to raise £750 million by 2012 - half of the £1.5 billion of lottery money poured into the Olympics.

Plans for the lottery were unveiled in east London this morning, exactly seven years before the start of the Games.

Olympics minister Tessa Jowell said the game was launched now to give it enough time to its target income.

More than 11m cards will go on sale tomorrow at £1 each. Players will have a chance of one in 4.93 to win part of the £6.5 million total prize money.

The 11 prize levels will start at £1, with nine people winning the top prize of £2,012.

Dianne Thompson, chief executive of the National Lottery operator Camelot, said 28p of each £1-card sold would go to the Olympics. About 50p is paid out in prizes, 12p in taxes and 5p each to Camelot and the shops selling the tickets.

The printing of the scratchcards started "literally two minutes" after the announcement that London won the Games, Ms Thompson added.

An array of sport stars helped to launch the new lottery. They included Daley Thompson, who took gold in the Decathlon in 1980 and 1984; Shirley Robertson, double Olympic champion in sailing; Heptathlon gold medallist Denise Lewis and Danny Crates, who won the 800m at the 2004 Paralympic Games.

London 2012 chairman Lord Sebastian Coe said the lottery would provide "key funding" for the Games.

"Seven years from today we will be just a few hours away from welcoming the world to the opening ceremony of the London 2012 Olympic Games.

He was "very confident" that the lottery will achieve its £750 million target, he added. "The British lottery is one of the few lotteries in the world that is actually on a rising income."

About 6.5 billion tickets will be sold in dedicated Olympic lotteries, raising £750 million for the 2012 Games.

Some of the lotteries will be internet based, while others will be themed around the Beijing Olympics in 2008.There are also talks about a London 2012-themed TV lottery game show.

Another £340m will come from existing elite sport programmes funded by the Sports Lottery Fund, and, if needed, up to £410m reallocated from mainstream lotteries just before the Games.

Over the last decade, the National Lottery has raised over £3 billion for UK sport, including £200 million for elite athletes in the run-up to the Athens 2004 Games.

The East Ham Leisure Centre, where the lottery was launched, was partly funded by £13 million of lottery money.

"Now there's a chance to build on this achievement and play a role in bringing the greatest show on earth to the UK," Ms Thompson said.