Retail partners are backbone of The National Lottery
Alison Acquaye-Acford was appointed Director of Commercial Partnerships and Retail Sales at Allwyn, operator of The National Lottery, back in December 2024. NR spoke to Alison to find out how things are going and what retailers can expect from The National Lottery over the coming year.
Since taking over as operator of The National Lottery in February 2024, Allwyn has gotten straight to work introducing new initiatives and upgrading systems and equipment.
Having stepped into the role of Director of Commercial Partnerships and Retail Sales, Alison Acquaye-Acford has been leading the team involved with their core customers, keeping retailers updated on the ongoing changes and plans for the future.
Having marked the 30th anniversary of The National Lottery last November, Allwyn took the opportunity to celebrate with its retail partners here in Northern Ireland earlier this year, when Chair Justin King MBE hosted a special celebratory breakfast at the Titanic Hotel.
As Alison explained, continued communication with their 43,500 retail partners is key to them being able to deliver on their ambitions, namely on their ultimate goal of growing returns to Good Causes from £30 million a week to £60 million a week by the end of their 10-year licence.
“Our retail partners are the backbone of The National Lottery and, to most players, our public face. So, we need to effectively communicate with them to ensure they continue to be great supporters and advocates of The National Lottery and everything it delivers across the UK,” said Alison.
“One of our main priorities is to make buying The National Lottery as easy and convenient for people as possible. That means being in the places that people are shopping and also ensuring we’re keeping up with the ever-changing retail landscape.
“For example, we’ve partnered with Snappy Shopper to offer independent retailers the ability to sell Scratchcards for home delivery, as that is becoming more popular for people with busy lives from a convenience perspective. And, for any retailer that does not yet have The National Lottery in their shop, we’d love to hear from you.”
In the last 20 months, from taking over as operator of The National Lottery a number of retail initiatives have been introduced, including rolling out the new, sustainable suite of National Lottery permanent point of sale (PPOS) equipment; launching the Local Retail Champions campaign, which is now in its second year; and introducing ‘Share the Win’, which rewards retailers who sell high-tier winning tickets in their stores.
Significantly, during the summer, they took National Lottery systems and terminals offline for 34 hours to allow them to deliver the biggest tech upgrade since The National Lottery was first launched in 1994.
“This saw us deliver 30-plus new systems, including new gaming software on every National Lottery terminal, and a series of complex data migrations, including the transfer of tens of thousands of retailer records and millions of transactions from the old to the new systems,” said Alison.
“We also upgraded our Retailer Hotline to new modern contact centre technology.
“Thanks to the support from our 43,500 retail partners, we were able to get systems back up and running several hours earlier than expected and the vast majority of stores were able to continue selling National Lottery tickets in good time.
“A small minority of stores experienced residual issues, and we have worked hard, and continue to do so, to carry out remote troubleshooting and face-to-face visits. Subsequently, we’ve also started the scale rollout of the new state-of-the-art Wave lottery terminals – with the new terminals being universally welcomed by the retailers that have received them.”
It’s fair to say that most of the focus for Allwyn this year has been on preparing their systems, tech and, most importantly, their retail partners for the recent technical switchover weekend. This involved delivering and installing the new Wave terminals in around 8000 stores that previously had Compact Lottery Terminals.
Alison explained that as the new terminal software wouldn’t work on the Compact Lottery Terminals, they had to ensure those stores didn’t experience any interruption to trading following the switchover.
“We then also carried out more than 39,000 phone calls, emails and face-to-face rep visits to National Lottery retailers ahead of the weekend; sent out comprehensive upgrade support packs to all stores, which included customer-facing posters and table-toppers to keep in-store players informed; and we doubled the amount of retail support resource available on the ground,” said Alison.
“Now our primary focus turns to rolling out the remainder of the Wave terminals and the PPOS items across all stores, with the rollout carrying on at pace in Northern Ireland as we speak.
“For the retailers that are patiently waiting, we are replacing thousands of Altura terminals each week and the PPOS is also steadily arriving in stores, so look out for communication from our support team who will be in touch to book in your installation date.”
Allwyn returned as platinum sponsor for the 2025 Neighbourhood Retailer Awards, as well as sponsoring the Community Store of the Year category, with Alison stressing the importance of them recognising and celebrating the achievements of Northern Irish retailers.
“It’s a real honour to be given the opportunity to help highlight, recognise and celebrate the huge contribution that independent retailers make to local high streets across Northern Ireland,” she said.
“It means a great deal to everyone at Allwyn to be able to celebrate the diligence, passion and perseverance shown by these retailers, day in, day out – many times 365 days a year.”
READ THE FULL INTERVIEW WITH ALISON ACQUAYE-ACFORD IN THE OCTOBER ISSUE OF NEIGHBOURHOOD RETAILER HERE
