Richard Desmond’s lengthy campaign to overturn the awarding of the fourth National Lottery licence has ended in bruising defeat, with the High Court throwing out a £1.3bn damages claim brought by the media tycoon against the Gambling Commission.
The action, pursued by Desmond’s New Lottery Company alongside his long-standing vehicle Northern & Shell, had alleged that the regulator ran a flawed competition when it handed the ten-year operating contract to Allwyn, the gaming group controlled by Czech billionaire Karel Komárek. Allwyn replaced Camelot, the licence holder since the lottery’s launch in 1994, when the new arrangement took effect.
In a ruling that will reverberate through Whitehall, Westminster and the wider regulated-gambling sector, Mrs Justice Joanna Smith found no basis for Desmond’s central allegations. “The claimants have failed to make out any case of manifest error on the part of the commission in their process claim,” she said. Neither Camelot nor Allwyn, she added, ought to have been disqualified from the tender, Camelot on grounds of alleged incumbency advantage, Allwyn on grounds of alleged conflict of interest. “The competition that was conducted for the award of the fourth licence reached a lawful outcome,” the judge concluded.
The claimants remain defiant. A spokesman for Northern & Shell responded bluntly: “They won. We lost. We appeal. It’s not over.”
The judgment draws a line, at least for now, under one of the most commercially significant public-procurement disputes of recent years. Industry observers had warned that a finding against the Gambling Commission could have triggered compensation exposure running well beyond the £1.3bn sought by Desmond’s camp, while casting a long shadow over the credibility of UK regulated competitions more broadly. For an SME-heavy supplier base that depends on the good-cause funding the lottery generates, prolonged uncertainty over the licence had been a growing concern.
The National Lottery remains one of the largest operations of its kind in the world. Since its launch three decades ago, players have contributed more than £52bn to in excess of 670,000 good causes across the United Kingdom, a funding pipeline that underpins everything from grassroots sports clubs to heritage projects and small charities.
For Desmond, once the proprietor of the Daily Express and OK! magazine, the ruling represents a significant setback in what has become a defining post-publishing commercial fight. An appeal now looms, but the commercial and reputational tide, for the moment, has turned firmly against him.
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Desmond’s £1.3bn National Lottery battle collapses as High Court sides with Gambling Commission