Irish lottery draw cancelled on live TV
A technical problem prevented the draw from being broadcast live at the usual time.
Ireland.- Another controversy has hit the Irish National Lottery. Saturday’s live televised Lotto draw was cancelled on air at the last moment because of a technical fault. RTE One TV announced that the draw would not go ahead shortly after its broadcast began at 7.55pm.
Presenter Kamal Ibrahim was welcoming viewers to the RTE studios and making the usual clarification that draws are independently observed when he unexpectedly departed from the script by saying “ah” and laughing at something off screen.
After the interruption, he continued: “Unfortunately due to technical difficulties the lotto draw cannot be completed as scheduled. The draw will be completed as soon as possible. Please hold all your tickets and await further announcements. It’s live TV so what can you do? See you soon.”
The problem was a malfunction in one of the Lotto machines, which began selecting balls ahead of schedule. The channel promptly cut back to its evening movie, Detective Pikachu.
A spokesman for the National Lottery said: “The National Lottery would like to inform its players that there was a minor technical issue with tonight’s Lotto draw. However, there is no issue with either the integrity of the draw or the numbers drawn.
“Earlier this evening we suspended the live broadcast of the Lotto draw due to a minor technical issue when the Lotto Plus 1 draw machine began selecting balls earlier than the sequence should have started. As is standard procedure, when a technical event occurs, the recording of the draw continues but the live tv broadcast is halted. This is in order to protect the integrity of the draw and is in line with our approved game rules and processes, all of which are and were independently observed by KPMG.
“The balls originally selected by the Lotto Plus 1 machine are final. The Lotto and Lotto Plus 2 draws were then conducted off air. Results of all draws are published on www.lottery.ie and will be displayed later on RTÉ 1.”
The results of the draw were posted later online with no live televised draw. There was no winner of the €2.7m jackpot.
It’s not the first controversy around the lottery. Back in 2021, Bernard Durkan, a Teachta Dála for the Fine Gael party, called for an audit and investigation after six months passed with no jackpot winner. In September of this year, the regulator of the National Lottery fined operator Premier Lotteries Ireland (PLI) €150,000 for self-exclusion breaches.
The regulator said PLI had breached the terms of its licence by allowing self-excluded players to open new accounts and buy tickets. In 2021, an algorithm deleted 126 accounts belonging to self-excluded customers, but the accounts should have been saved in order to prevent their owners from opening new ones.
France’s Française des Jeux (FDJ) has entered into an agreement to buy Premier Lotteries Ireland (PLI). The group, which runs France’s national lottery, will pay €350m to buy the business from the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan (OTPP), An Post and An Post Pension Fund.
