Oflot

The Office of the National Lottery. It was established in 1993 by the then Secretary of State for National Heritage, Peter Brooke. Its first task was to issue a licence to the National Lottery operator and thereafter to monitor its performance. In May 1994, a seven-year licence was issued to the Camelot Group, a consortium that included Cadbury-Schweppes, Racal Electronics, the bank note printers De La Rue, ICL, and an experienced US lottery group, G-Tech. The licence was renewed for a further seven years in December 2000.

On 22 October 1993 Peter Davies, a deputy chairman of Abbey National plc, was appointed as its director-general. The high-profile entrepreneur Richard Branson, who had earlier offered to operate a non-profitmaking lottery, won a libel case in February 1998 against a director of Camelot who, he said, had tried to bribe him to drop his lottery bid, and on the following day the Oflot director-general, who had been under considerable pressure to do so, resigned.

The renewal of the license was marked by months of controversy, as first the National Lottery Commission could not decide between Richard Branson's bid and Camelot's bid for the licence, then found in favour of Branson, then after a legal challenge by Camelot, examined both bids again, and finally awarded the licence to Camelot.