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The top prize in the Channel Islands Christmas Lottery is climbing, but at a far more sedate pace than it has in previous years.
The organisers seem unabashed though, saying it is likely the 2023 jackpot will eventually reach more than last year's which was £545,118.
As of today - with two weeks to go before the big draw - the guaranteed first prize has risen to £350,000.
Pictured: CI Christmas Lottery tickets for 2023 went on sale on 1 October.
Jon Taylor, the Senior Lottery Officer for the States Trading Group, which operates the Lottery in Guernsey said: “Sales are building nicely as we get closer to Christmas and if currents trends continue, we hope that by the day of the draw we can get close to last year’s top prize of £545,118.”
The top prize will continue to rise as sales increase before the draw, which takes place in Jersey on Thursday 21 December.
It will include another 66 drawn prizes, from £500 to £50,000, and there are also 200,000 instant prizes in the scratch off part of the ticket.
All the proceeds from the Christmas Lottery are distributed to worthy causes throughout the Channel Islands.
Pictured: John Taylor in 2021.
While a top prize of more than £350,000 is a fantastic sum to win by anyone's standards, it is a far cry from previous running totals at this stage of the lottery sales period.
It also means the Christmas jackpot will be far less than it was in its financial heyday of a decade ago when the prize seemed to easily reach more than a million pounds for a few years in a row.
With the rolling first prize now standing at £350,000, it means that just £50,000 has been added to the guaranteed jackpot since the 2023 lottery was launched in October, more than nine weeks ago.
By comparison, on 6 December last year the 2022 jackpot had reached £400,000 and by 3 December 2021 the top prize had reached £450,000.
Looking back even further, on 10 December 2018 the jackpot for that year's Channel Islands Christmas Lottery was already up to at least £825,000.
That year's lottery was billed as a 'Millionaire Maker' but it did not live up to its title, and the name has not been used since.
By the time the 2018 draw was made, on 20 December, the first prize was £977,184. An anonymous Guernsey winner took home the money.
The 2020, 2021, and 2022 jackpots were £696,740, £631,000, and £545,118 respectively, showing a clear drop off in ticket sales and prize money in recent years.
2022 had seen the smallest jackpot for a decade, following a 7% fall in ticket sales compared to the previous year.
2022 was also the year that ticket prices dropped back down to £2 having previously been put up to £3 in 2018.
Pictured: CI Christmas Lottery tickets used to be £1, then they doubled to £2, before increasing to £3 and then dropping back down to £2.
The decision to increase the cover price to £3 per ticket co-incided with the reduction in sales.
Up until 2012 ticket prices had been £1 for the Christmas draw, but that was doubled - with an additional chance to win through having two sets of numbers - to £2 per ticket in 2013.
2013 then saw the record broken for the largest CI Christmas Lottery prize ever, with the jackpot hitting £1,038,000.
The first prize went over a million pounds for each of the next four years before starting to drop off in value.
In 2012 the jackpot was £686,000, in 2013 it reached the then-record of £1,038,000, before hitting a new record in 2014 of £1,220,000.
In 2015 the jackpot reached £1,161,750, in 2016 it was £1,120,220 and in 2017 it was £1,008,410.
In 2018, when tickets increased in price to £3 the jackpot was back below the £1m marker at £977,184.
Pictured: A review of the Channel Islands lottery was held after ticket sales dropped when the cover price was increased in 2018.
A review of the pan island Christmas Lottery was held earlier this year with a raft of changes proposed.
None have yet been introduced, but they included dropping the scratch card element of the £2 ticket or the introduction of a second £5 ticket.
A survey held as part of the review gauged feedback to several proposed changes, including only providing one draw number per ticket, instead of two.
The survey was one part of a larger review into the Lottery that includes charity sector feedback and discussions with resellers.
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