Lotto punters crash website

THE National Lottery website went into meltdown last night as thousands of punters tried to check if they had won the record £57.8 million jackpot.

The repeated attempts to access the online results caused Camelot’s servers to crash after the winning numbers had been drawn.

Camelot, the lottery organiser, apologised, saying it had been impossible to prepare for such a huge volume of players. The online crash was a repeat of chaos around the draw on Wednesday evening, when the jackpot stood at £50.4 million. Thousands of punters had made a last-minute scramble for a winning ticket last night, spending nearly £3million in the final hour of sales as Britain became gripped by lottery fever.

Queues formed at ticket outlets as the 7.30pm deadline approached.

Tickets were anticipated to have been selling at a rate of 400 per second

in the final hour before sales closed. An estimated 40 million people were expected to buy at least one £2 ticket – twice the weekly average last year – of which 31 per cent is earmarked for good causes. That means at least £25 million will be generated for good causes from Lotto tickets alone.

New rules for when a jackpot passes £50million dictate that if no players match all six numbers the prize is shared between winners in the next tier where there is at least one winner – most likely those with five main numbers and the bonus ball.

Camelot predicted a “massive boost for good causes”.

The run of rollovers follows the number of balls in the draw increasing from 49 to 59 in October, reducing the odds on a player’s six numbers coming up from around one in 14 million to one in 45 million. Last night’s prize eclipsed the previous highest jackpot won of £42 million.