Camelot going for 2012 gold

[Fiona]

GO FOR GOLD, Camelot’s Olympic lottery scratchcard, sold £8 million in its first six weeks, despite being launched as the holiday season was starting. Further plans for the Olympic lottery will be announced next week as Camelot aims to raise £750 million as part of the package to underwrite the financing of the 2012 Games.

Phil Smith, the company’s commercial and operations director, said yesterday: “This is a very good start compared to other scratchcards. We are very encouraged.” Tickets went on sale on July 28. “This is not a sprint. It is a marathon,” Smith said.

Details of the sales figures emerged yesterday as the Budget Committee of the London Assembly questioned officials of Camelot, the Greater London Authority and Transport for London about their plans for 2012.

Asked after the three-hour meeting whether she was concerned that the lottery might not meet its target, Sally Hamwee, who chairs the committee, said: “We are alert but not worried as to whether the Games will end up over budget or having a shortfall in projected income and whether this will rebound on the London council tax payers and the tax payers of this country.”

She pointed out that Neale Coleman, the director of business planning and regeneration for the GLA, had said that he could not give guarantees that everything would be on budget. In particular, this applied to the cost of acquiring land at Olympic Park, some of which is to be subjected to compulsory purchase orders.

Answering a question from Damian Hockney, a committee member, about cost overruns for staging the Olympics, Coleman pointed out that after operational costs, all Olympics since Montreal in 1976 had made a profit.

However, he said that London 2012 had learnt from the experiences of Olympic hosts. He added that at a meeting with the International Olympic Committee Coordination Commission, which oversees the running of the Games, “the general tenor was that we had already put in place the structures so we avoid the pitfalls of Athens. In Athens, three or four years went past after it got the Games when virtually nothing happened.”