The UK’s National Lottery is currently investigating widespread reports of accessibility issues with its website and mobile application. This disruption comes on the heels of a global IT outage that caused significant disruptions across various sectors, including airports, railway stations, businesses, and the NHS.
While the connection between these events remains unclear, the National Lottery acknowledged the problem via their official X (formerly Twitter) account, stating: “We are aware that some players are experiencing difficulties accessing our website and app. We apologize for the inconvenience and our team is actively investigating the root cause of this issue.”
The timing of this outage is particularly unfortunate, as it coincides with a substantial £44 million jackpot in Friday’s EuroMillions draw, which also promised to create 10 guaranteed UK millionaires. The winning numbers for this draw were reported as 15, 22, 35, 44, and 48, with Lucky Stars 6 and 7.
Since Friday evening, thousands of users have reported encountering error messages when attempting to access the National Lottery website. Online services displayed a message stating: “Our online services are temporarily unavailable. We apologize for the inconvenience and are working to restore access as soon as possible.” Similarly, the mobile app informed users that it was “unable to load.”
According to DownDetector, a platform that tracks service outages globally, these issues have been persistent since approximately 9 PM on Friday, with over 2,000 reports of inaccessibility at the time of writing.
This incident follows a broader IT crisis triggered by a flawed software update from American cybersecurity firm Crowdstrike. The update caused widespread disruption, affecting international airports and even forcing some NHS facilities to turn away patients due to system outages in GP surgeries.
George Kurtz, Crowdstrike’s founder and CEO, addressed the situation on NBC’s Today Show, expressing deep regret and explaining that the issue stemmed from a bug in a single update. He assured that the problem was swiftly identified and rectified.
As of now, IT specialists are working diligently to fully restore systems across healthcare, financial, and travel sectors that were impacted by this far-reaching technical failure.
Dave Sawyer has nearly 25 years experience working within the iGaming Industry. Initially starting out with Ladbrokes based in the British Overseas Territory of Gibraltar in 2000, after 5 years with the tier one operator in his role of IT Services Manager, Dave left to setup his own casino affiliate site.
During the years Dave has spoken at several industry events, including the Casino Affiliate Convention held in Amsterdam in 2006, where Dave appeared on the forum panel. Other events Dave has been a speaker at include the iGB London Affiliate Conference.
More recently Dave has written for Casinomeister.com and has been a moderator on the popular Casinomeister Forum since 2010, where he posts under the user handle Webzcas.