Today's Daily Express is putting the boot into the National Lottery on its front page. It reports the Lottery is doubling the price of a ticket and cutting prizes.
It should probably be noted that the Daily Express and the Health Lottery are both owned by Richard Desmond:
That's not to say this isn't a story. Other papers have also run with it. After all, a 100 per cent price rise was unlikely to avoid criticism, especially if Camelot is also cutting the prizes at the same time.
In its article, The Express offers the following detail on these cuts to the prizes:
"Camelot said ...the extra money generated would go towards bigger prizes and a new raffle which will give 50 players the chance to win £20,000 every week.
"The average Saturday jackpot will increase from about £4.1million to £5million while Wednesday's top prize will increase from £2.2million to about £2.5million."
So not really a cut to the prizes as such. More an increase. But let's not get bogged down in semantics.
There then follows a whopping great six paragraph quote from the CEO of the Health Lottery criticising Camelot's "protected monopoly position" and telling Express readers "this amounts to an abuse of Camelot's dominant market position", "more competition is needed to allow other lotteries to thrive" and "health Lottery players will face no such price hike".
Again, this may be fair comment even from somebody with such a clear conflict of interests, but the Express doesn't think it relevant to mention at any point its shared ownership with the Health Lottery.
It's probably just an oversight.
See also:
Express turns a blind eye to Channel 5 repeats
Of tabloid editors and football managers
They should have had Advertisment at the top of the story :)
Posted by: Mac | Jan 17, 2013 at 18:59