Who Owns National Lottery?

Nobody owns the National Lottery — it is licensed, not sold. The right to run it belongs to the state, and the operator holds a fixed-term licence granted by the Gambling Commission. Since 1 February 2024 that operator has been Allwyn, controlled by the Czech billionaire Karel Komárek, which replaced Camelot after 28 years — and then bought Camelot as well. Ownership verified 6 September 2026.

Who owns National Lottery today?

The National Lottery is not a company and cannot be bought. It was created by statute, and the right to operate it is awarded through a competition run by the Gambling Commission for a defined period.

The current licence holder is Allwyn Entertainment, which took over on 1 February 2024 under the fourth licence. The previous operator, Camelot, had held it since the lottery began in 1994.

So the accurate answer to “who owns the National Lottery” is that the state does, and Allwyn runs it under contract.

Ultimate parent and corporate structure

Allwyn is part of KKCG, the investment group founded and controlled by Karel Komárek, a Czech businessman whose fortune came from gas and energy.

Allwyn operates lotteries in several European countries — Austria, the Czech Republic, Greece and Italy among them — and in 2025 agreed a combination with the Greek operator OPAP, creating one of the largest lottery groups in the world.

Komárek’s Russian business connections drew scrutiny during and after the licence competition, particularly following the invasion of Ukraine; Allwyn stated it had divested the relevant interests.

Major shareholders or controlling persons

Karel Komárek is the controlling person behind the operator. There is no listing of Allwyn’s UK business and no dispersed shareholder base to examine.

Crucially, none of this gives him ownership of the lottery itself. The licence can be withdrawn, is time-limited, and comes with detailed obligations on what proportion of revenue goes to good causes. An operator’s shareholders take the operating profit; the lottery remains a state franchise.

Official records and evidence

Companies House is the wrong place to start. The authoritative record is the Gambling Commission, which publishes the licence, the competition outcome and its regulatory decisions, and reports on the operator’s performance against its obligations.

The National Audit Office and parliamentary committees have also examined both the 2022 licence competition and the transition, and their reports are public.

The competition itself was litigated: Camelot and a technology supplier challenged the award to Allwyn in the High Court before dropping the case, which delayed the handover preparations.

Ownership history and changes

The National Lottery was established under the National Lottery etc. Act 1993 and launched in November 1994.

• 1994–2024 — operated by Camelot, across three licences.
• 2010 — Camelot bought by the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan, so for over a decade the National Lottery was run by a Canadian teachers’ pension fund.
• March 2022 — the Gambling Commission names Allwyn as preferred applicant for the fourth licence.
• November 2022 — Allwyn agrees to buy Camelot itself from Ontario Teachers’ for a reported £100m.
• 1 February 2024 — the fourth licence begins and Allwyn takes over.

The 2022 purchase is the neat detail: having won the licence from Camelot, Allwyn then bought the company it had beaten — acquiring the staff, systems and infrastructure needed to run what it had already been awarded.

Related companies and brands

Allwyn runs the National Lottery draw games, scratchcards and online products in Britain, and lotteries elsewhere in Europe through KKCG.

The good causes money is not Allwyn’s. It goes to independent distributing bodies — the National Lottery Heritage Fund, Sport England, Arts Council England and others — which decide grants without reference to the operator. A National Lottery-funded project has no commercial relationship with the licence holder.

The lottery is also not connected to the private lotteries and prize draws that have grown up alongside it, such as the Postcode Lottery, which operate under different licences and different ownership entirely.