‘I bought a chunk of the moon’: The highs and lows of 30 years of the National Lottery

As the National Lottery celebrates its 30th birthday, we look at how it has changed people’s lives (for better and for worse)

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“It could be you”. That was the slogan that launched the National Lottery in November 1994. As the lottery celebrates 30 years, it still could be you – although the odds hover at about 45 million to one.
To date, the lottery has created 7,200 millionaires and multi-millionaires and adds to their ranks at a rate of seven a week. It has generated £49 billion for “good causes” – and some causes which have fallen flat – and helped millions of winners realise their dreams, both big and small, from a pool and a Porsche to a firework factory, a racehorse, and a patch of land on the moon. Here, we chronicle the highs and lows of 30 years of the lottery in 30 numbers…
The total number of National Lottery awards handed out across the UK to date. Decisions on where funding is invested is made by 12 specialist organisations, and 70 per cent of awards are £10,000 or less. Use our tool to see what the Lottery has funded in your area.
The time it reportedly took infamous jackpot winner Michael Carroll to spend nearly £10 million in winnings. Carroll, then 19, was a part-time refuse collector when he won £9,736,131 in the Lucky Dip in 2002. He arrived to collect his cheque wearing an electronic tag (following a conviction for being drunk and disorderly) and was branded the “Lotto lout” by the tabloids. In 2006, he was jailed for nine months for affray. Later that year the BBC reported that Carroll had spent his multi-million pound fortune on property, drugs, parties and cars. He declared bankruptcy in 2013.
The biggest single grant handed out by the National Lottery, awarded for the construction of the Millennium Dome (now The O2 arena). But what was supposed to be the jewel in the crown of the UK’s millennium celebrations quickly became a PR disaster. At the time, The Telegraph said it looked “like Dame Barbara Cartland on a bad hair day”. Its extravagant opening ceremony on 31 December 1999 was a catastrophe, with thousands of VIPs waiting for hours in the cold at Stratford Tube station and the police called to investigate a bomb hoax in the Blackwall Tunnel. When they opened to the public, the exhibitions within proved to be a failure and attracted barely half of the expected 12 million visitors. At one point the Government considered relocating it to Swindon. It closed in January 2001, but after re-launching as the O2 Arena in June 2007, has gone from strength to strength. Last year it sold 2.5 million tickets, making it the world’s busiest music arena.
The number of new millionaires created by the lottery since it launched in 1994. Across all its games, the lottery makes seven people millionaires each week on average – equating to one new millionaire every day.
The lifespan of the ill-fated National Centre for Popular Music in Sheffield, arguably one of the Lottery’s biggest flops. The museum cost £15 million – £11.4 million of which was from the lottery – and went 11.2 per cent over budget. It opened in March 1999 and pulled in less than a third of the projected number of visitors, so it prematurely closed just over a year later in June 2000. It is now the Students Union for Sheffield Hallam University.
The jackpot won by Belfast bus driver Peter Lavery in 1996. Initially, Lavery admitted he became a lottery cliché, splashing the cash on houses, cruises, jacuzzis with built-in televisions and Swarovski crystal jungle animals, plus spending half a million on a fleet of luxury cars. But he went on to become a successful businessman, building up a property portfolio across Northern Ireland and investing in a whiskey distillery that attracted £35m in investment – despite now being teetotal. He described this success as “like winning the lottery again”.
9 in 10 of the most-visited attractions in the UK have received lottery funding, with the exception of (the exception being Windsor Great Park, as the Crown Estate does not receive funding).
Antony Gormley’s Angel of the North, which was largely funded by the lottery in 1998, is seen by more than one person every second – that’s 90,000 per day or 33 million per year – making it one of the most-viewed pieces of art in the world.
The lottery grant awarded for the refurbishment of the Royal Opera House in London in 1995, igniting a row over the lottery’s concentration on the capital that has rumbled on and on. At one point in time, lottery funding for the arts per head in London exceeded some other UK counties by 700 to 1. Since then, it has been more fairly distributed – although not always. Research conducted by BBC Wales in 2018 found that three parts of London (The Cities of London and Westminster, Holborn and St Pancras and Islington South and Finsbury) received more National Lottery cash per person than any other part of the UK over a 20 year period. At the time, the lottery said it distributes money based on a UK Government formula.
Another unusual purchase from the hall of fame. 2005 winner Debbie Mather spent 10 per cent of her £5m jackpot on setting up a fireworks factory which is still in operation to this day.
The number of operators the National Lottery has had in its 30-year history. The first, Camelot, is owned by a Canadian pension fund and has run the lottery since its launch in 1994. In 2023, a new ten-year licence was granted to Allwyn, whose international parent company is owned by the Czech billionaire Karel Komárek.
Among the more unusual lotto purchases is two acres (or roughly 8093 metres squared) of land on the moon, bought on the internet by jackpot winner Dean Allen in August 2000.
The amount of lottery funding awarded to the Eden Project in Cornwall, one of the great lottery success stories. Building a series of giant conservatories in a disused clay pit to host the world’s flora and fauna was an outlandish idea. But it has proved itself to be a runaway success, contributing more than £2 billion to the local economy and attracting more than 18 million visitors since it opened in 2001.
The amount spent on the lottery’s most controversial grant – £10 million for the purchase of an exclusive Scottish hunting lodge.
The price tag on the most expensive lottery art purchase to date – Raphael’s Madonna of the Pinks, which hangs in the National Gallery in London.
The most extravagant purchase made by Elaine and Derek Thompson following their £2.7 million win in 1995 was a racehorse named Sick Note (because he always used to fall ill before a race). Other than being able to send their two children to university debt-free, the couple from North Shields, Tyne and Wear, kept their life much the same. Elaine even stayed in her job stacking shelves in Marks & Spencer until she retired.
The percentage of jackpot winners who choose to waive their anonymity. The vast majority choose to keep their winnings under wraps.
The number of visitors to the British Museum in London – the most-visited lottery funded attraction – last year. This is still below pre-pandemic levels, but is a 42 per cent increase on 2022. The British Museum has received £63 million in lottery funding to date.
The amount of time Lisa Cannings and her then-husband Gerry took to actually claim their £32.5m winnings – because they were having their house decorated. When they won the rollover jackpot in 2016, Lisa said they would “carry on as boringly and normally as we always have”. “I know it sounds mad but we had a guy in to paint the whole house. We’d been planning it for ages and had packed everything into boxes,” she said at the time. “We just thought it would be easier to wait, although it did mean that Gerry had to carry round the winning ticket in his wallet all week. It was very nerve-racking.” The couple have since split.
The number of paying visitors the Life Force Centre in Bradford attracted in its first week. The centre, which opened in 2000, was designed to celebrate humankind’s history of religious belief and was awarded £2.2 million in lottery funding. Visitor numbers were a fraction of the projected 40,000 a year needed to make the project viable and it closed after just seven months.
The biggest lotto jackpot to date, scooped by an anonymous winner in July 2022.
The amount of lottery money granted to football since its launch, which makes it the most generously-funded sport. It is followed by swimming (£296m), athletics (£278m), rugby (£272m), and cycling (£272m).
The number of television viewers who tuned in to see Noel Edmunds present the first live National Lottery draw on November 19 1994 as the nation was gripped by lottery fever.
The age of Callie Rogers, the UK’s youngest ever jackpot winner. Rogers won £1.8 million in 2003 and spent hundreds of thousands of pounds on clothes and breast enhancement surgery. She suffered from depression and later admitted she wished she had never bought the ticket. In 2021, the minimum age to play increased to 18.
The most drawn ball (as both a main and bonus ball) since 1994.
The amount of lottery money spent on the National Glass Centre in Sunderland, a museum dedicated to “promoting glass in all its uses”. The first major lottery-funded project in the north-east has struggled on for years but is sadly facing closure in 2026, as the local authority can no longer afford repairs on the building.
The number of the first ball that fell into place on November 19 1994. It was followed by 3, 5, 44, 14 and 22. The bonus ball was 10.
The smallest lottery grant to date, awarded to fix a trumpet.
There are many ways players choose to pick their lucky numbers, but this is the amount won by Billy Gibbons, who may have the most unusual method in lottery lore. When Billy’s pet chicken, Kiev, walked over his calculator, he chose five of the six numbers for his Lotto ticket and banked £1,297 in 2003.
The postcode most likely to net you a Lotto win. A study conducted in 2016 declared Romford, east London, the luckiest town, with 1,238 wins of more than £50,000 each since the lottery began.
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