For most of its history, playing the lottery meant a trip to the shop, a playslip and a pen. That picture is changing fast. More than half of the UK National Lottery’s revenue now comes from online play, and the UK is well ahead of most of its EuroMillions partners.
The figures come from From Ticket to Touchscreen, a 2026 report on Europe’s lotteries by EveryMatrix, which supplies technology to lotteries and casinos, and the analysts at Online Gambling Quarterly. Here’s what it found, and what it means if you play.
The UK: 53% online and still growing
In 2025, 53% of the UK National Lottery’s revenue came through its website and app. That online business brought in around €2.2 billion, up 12% on the year before. The figure is what the lottery kept after paying out prizes, rather than the total value of tickets sold. Only France’s FDJ made more online, and its total includes the Unibet betting business it runs outside France.
Per person, the UK is mid-table at about €31 a head. Finland’s Veikkaus leads that measure at €101, which says less about the UK playing too little and more about how far online play has gone in the Nordic countries.
How the EuroMillions countries compare
The report doesn’t look at EuroMillions on its own. These are each lottery’s whole business, from draw games to scratchcards. But it does cover most of the countries that play EuroMillions, and the spread is striking:
| Country | Lottery | Online share, 2025 |
|---|---|---|
| United Kingdom | The National Lottery | 53% |
| Austria | Austrian Lotteries | 38% |
| Belgium | Belgian National Lottery | 30%* |
| Switzerland | Swisslos | 28% |
| France | FDJ | 26% |
| Ireland | Premier Lotteries Ireland | 18%* |
| Switzerland | Loterie Romande | 16% |
| Spain | SELAE | 3%* |
* Share of sales. All other figures are shares of revenue after prizes. Switzerland has two lotteries: Swisslos for the German- and Italian-speaking cantons, Loterie Romande for the French-speaking ones. Portugal and Luxembourg were not included in the report. Source: EveryMatrix and Online Gambling Quarterly, From Ticket to Touchscreen, Chapter 1 (2026).
For context, the average across the 18 European lotteries in the study was 39%. The leaders are all in the Nordic countries, which don’t play EuroMillions: Norway’s Norsk Tipping is at 81%, Denmark’s Danske Spil at 70% and Sweden’s Svenska Spel at 63%.
Why the gap is so wide
The report doesn’t try to explain each country’s figure, but a few things stand out.
Part of the difference is simply what each lottery sells online. Some offer sports betting and casino-style games alongside their draws, and others offer little beyond draw tickets.
Habit matters too. Spain, at just 3%, has a lottery built around its network of official lottery shops, and its Christmas draw, El Gordo, is as much a social occasion as a game. Buying a ticket in person is part of the point.
Ireland, at 18%, also has some of the tightest rules on online play in Europe. Its lottery regulator bans the sale of draw-game tickets between 10pm and 6am, in shops and online, and of online instant-win games between 11pm and 6am. Online spending is capped at €75 a day, €300 a week and €900 a month. Whether that holds online play back is hard to say, but it shows that online doesn’t have to mean always on.
Where it’s heading: Norway is giving up on shop terminals
If you want to see where this ends up, look at Norway. In February 2025, Norsk Tipping announced that from 1 January 2028 you will no longer be able to hand in a Lotto coupon at a shop. The lottery terminals behind the counter are being retired, and only its Flax scratchcards will still be sold in store.
Its reasons were practical. About 90% of its sales were already digital, the terminals were reaching the end of their life, and the number of shops selling its games had fallen from around 5,000 at its peak to 2,773. Nobody is suggesting the UK is about to follow, but it shows where the trend leads.
And online increasingly means your phone. The report puts mobile at 80% to 90% of lotteries’ online revenue.
What it means if you play
Buying online through your country’s official lottery has some real advantages:
- You can’t lose the ticket. Your entry is registered to your account, so there’s no slip to misplace, wash or leave in a coat pocket.
- Nobody stands between you and your prize. The counter frauds we cover in our lottery scams guide, where a shopkeeper says a winning ticket lost, can’t happen to an online entry.
- You can set limits. Official lottery accounts typically let you set spending limits, which is much harder to do with cash at a counter.
The convenience cuts both ways, though. The report’s own safer-gambling contributor points out that instant games, frequent draws and push notifications can speed up play and remove the natural pause of waiting for a draw. If you play online, set a limit when you open the account, not after a bad week.
Prefer paper? Nothing’s changing for you yet. Our EuroMillions ticket checker will tell you in seconds whether a paper ticket has won. And if you’re thinking of buying a ticket from another country’s lottery, remember that official tickets can usually only be bought while you’re physically in that country. Our guide to official lottery sites explains the rules country by country.
Sources
- EveryMatrix and Online Gambling Quarterly, From Ticket to Touchscreen: How Europe’s lotteries are investing in a digital future, Chapter 1 (2026).
- Norsk Tipping, “Mot slutten for kommisjonærdrift” (press release, 21 February 2025, in Norwegian).
- Regulator of the National Lottery (Ireland), Preventing Problem Gambling measures for the National Lottery (updated November 2025).
