UK National Lottery Ditches Monopoly & Scrabble to Abide by New CAP Rules

Camelot, United Kingdom’s National Lottery operator, has removed two of its top Instant Win Games (IWGs), Scrabble and Monopoly, from its online portfolio. The lottery operator arrived at the decision in a bid to adhere to the new Committee for Advertising Practice (CAP) regulations, which focus on protecting youngsters from gambling.

Under the new guidelines, which came to effect on October 1, lottery and gambling ads should not appeal strongly to underage audiences. Therefore, Camelot cannot feature or refer to celebrities, footballers, video games, or reality show stars. Featuring such personalities or components in gambling ads is against the CAP codes of conduct as they strongly appeal to persons under 18.

When CAP announced the new rules in April this year, its Director Shahriar Coupal said:

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“By ending these practices, our new rules invite a new era for gambling ads, more particular to the adult audience they can target and more befitting of the age-restricted product they’re promoting.”

The new adjustment in its product offering follows Camelot’s decision to increase the age limit for bettors who want to buy and play its gambling products to 18. Camelot updated its minimum age requirement from 16 to 18 in April 2021 after the UK government announced the regulatory changes to fight gambling harm among youngsters.

Controlling the Appeal of Gambling to Under-18 Bettors

Over the years, Camelot has been offering several Monopoly Instant Win Games with different price points and gambling rules. For example, the £2.50 Monopoly Gold games were developed to look like the original board game. When playing a Monopoly Gold classic game, a player will select from a range of game tokens, and to enable the token assigned to move around the board, they click on dice.

The games comprise instant prizes and mini-games, and a player collects property cards as they move around the board. This year alone, several lucky players, including Karen Lucock from Carlisle and Mr. S from North Ayrshire, won £100,000 from playing Monopoly Gold Classic.

While announcing the new changes in its product offering, Camelot emphasized its compliance with the 18-year-old age limit. Further, the operator added that even though IWGs have been proven low risk regarding vulnerability to problem gambling, it has gotten rid of them anyway. The official statement from a Camelot spokesperson read in part:

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“You must be over the age of 18 to register for a National Lottery online account – so no one under the age of 18 can play online Instant Win Games (IWGs) – and it’s widely recognized that the inherent risk of problem play associated with National Lottery products is very low. However, as a responsible operator, we’ve been reviewing our advertising over a number of months in line with the new CAP Code rules, which we knew were coming into force. As a result, we’ve removed – or not extended the licensing for – games such as Monopoly and Scrabble, and, for example, modified the artwork on our £300,000 Fruity Bingo and Winter Wonderlines IWGs. The artwork changes involved removing the images of fruit from the £300k Fruity Bingo game and removing some of the symbols.”

Camelot has also removed a present used in the Winter Wonderlines games. The removed imagery used to appear on the detail pages for every game, which might be deemed as the National Lottery website’s promotional areas.

Camelot Had Been Called Out for Its IWGs Offering

Last year, Camelot came under fire from MPs from the Labor and Conservative Party because of shifting its focus to IWGs. The members of parliament argued that because IWGs could be accessed from anywhere, unlike in a traditional setup where someone had to buy a lottery in person, they would increase problem gambling.

In addition, the MPs were concerned the move by Camelot would reduce the funds directed to Good Causes as IWGs proceeds contribute less to the charitable initiatives. According to Camelot’s figures at the time, 31% of revenue from traditional draw-based games was directed to community initiates, compared to 9% from scratchcards and 12% from IWGs.

In a statement to counter the MPs’ arguments, a spokesperson from Camelot noted:

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“By giving people a choice of safe and enjoyable games that they want to play, by making those games attractive and generous to players, and by enabling people to play in ways that suit them best, we’re generating record monetary returns to good causes from ticket sales, record prize money to players and record payments in lottery duty to the Treasury – all in a responsible way.”

After a 28-year-long tenure as UK’s National Lottery operator, Camelot will finally be hanging its boots following a defeat in the competitive bidding process earlier in May. The company will hand over the stewardship to Allwyn UK, who will take over the National Lottery for the next ten years.

According to Robert Chvatal, the CEO of Alwyn’s Czech group, when Allwyn takes over the National Lottery in February 2024, they will focus on re-energizing and reinvigorating the lottery. Allwyn also plans to find ways of raising more money for good causes.