Thursday will be the launch of a new national lottery called Go For Gold, to fund the London 2012 Summer Olympic Games.
National Lottery funding will contribute up to 1.5 billion pounds toward the cost of the 2012 Games of which 750 million pounds will come from a series of dedicated lottery games. National Lottery operator Camelot Group forecasts that sales of more than 2.65 billion pounds will be required between the financial years 2005-2006 and 2012-2013 to generate the revenue.
In 2006 Camelot wants to launch a new draw-based game subject to the approve of the National Lottery Commission and the International Olympic Committee, as well as one-off event games based around special occasions connected to Team GB, and a series of scratch cards and interactive instant win games.
There may also be London 2012-themed television game shows linked to scratch cards or draw-based games, as well as Internet-based based Games.
More than 11 million Go For Gold scratch cards have been printed with a total prize fund of 6.595,896 pounds available to win at the launch. The scratch cards will cost one pound to play with 11 prize levels from one pound up to a top prize of about 2,012 pounds.
Olympics Minister Tessa Jowell told BBC Radio that security at the London 2012 Games would be a “major challenge”.
“Over 200 million pounds has been budgeted within the Olympic funding package to meet the security concerns; security will be built in, it will be designed in, to every one of the Olympic venues and to the Olympic Village”, she said.
Other streams of revenue will come from the International Olympic Committee TV and marketing deals, sponsorship and official suppliers’ ticket revenues and licensing.
The government is spending 800 million pounds redeveloping the Lea Valley and seven billion pounds on London’s transport infrastructure, but none of this will be funded from the Olympic budget.
