Irish National Lottery operator fined for system bug

Premier Lotteries Ireland suffered a software error that led to some players being told that winning tickets had no prize.

Ireland.- The Irish National Lottery operator Premier Lotteries Ireland, now owned by France’s FDJ, has been issued a fine owing to a system bug. Ireland’s Office of the Regulator of the National Lottery (ORNL) issued the €23,000 fine due to a software error that occurred in 2022.

The error allowed players to check their tickets ahead of time while the system was still in the process of verifying numbers. The regulator said the bug may have caused some winning tickets to be digarded by customers. 

The regulator said that some €2,299 in prizes might not have been accounted for. One ticket had a €250 win, while there were several with winnings between €2 and €24. 

The ORNL said: “A third-party software release resulted in a number of players accessing the Check My Numbers facility on the National Lottery website at a time when it should not have been available, as draw results were still being verified.

“As a result, some players received a ‘Ticket Not a Winner’ message when, in fact, the numbers they had entered were winning numbers in the draw that had just taken place and was still being verified.” 

Premier Lotteries self-reported the error and said it had taken steps to correct the problem, including giving unclaimed winnings to players. The fine will be directed to social initiatives.

Premier Lotteries took on the Irish National Lottery in 2014 under a 20-year licence. It was bought by La Française des Jeux (FDJ) in November of last year in one of a series of acquisitions undertaken by the French gaming giant, which most recently bought the Swedish online gambling operator Kindred. FDJ this week appointed a new board for Kindred.