Sales to the end of Quarter three (December 30 2006): National Lottery sales in the nine months to the end of Quarter three were £3,713.8 million – an increase of £105.4 million or 2.9% on the figure of £3,608.4 million to the end of the same period last year.

Draw-based ticket sales: Sales of tickets for Draw-based games over the first three quarters of 2006/07 reached £3,036.9 million – up £57.6 million or 1.9% on the figure of £2,979.3 million for the first three quarters of the previous year.

Scratchcards and Instant Win Games: Sales of National Lottery Scratchcards and Interactive Instant Win Games also saw strong growth, increasing to £676.9 million – up £47.8 million or 7.6% on the figure of £629.1 million for the nine months to the end of Quarter three last year

Returns to Good Causes: The rise in ticket sales in the first three quarters of 2006/7 helped drive direct returns to the Good Causes to the end of Quarter three to over £944.6 million, up £13.3 million compared to the same period last year (the quarterly figures do not include investment returns or unclaimed prizes so the overall figure will be higher). This takes the total returned to the Good Causes to over £19 billion.

2012 Olympic Games and Paralympic Games: In the third quarter of this financial year returns to the Olympic Lottery Distribution Fund (OLDF) from sales of designated National Lottery games in support of the London 2012 Games exceeded £33.3 million. This compares to £24.2 million the previous quarter, an increase of 37.6%, bringing the total raised for London 2012 up to December 30 to more than £87.2 million. The National Lottery® will contribute up to £1.5 billion towards funding the infrastructure of the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games. Of this, £750 million will come from a series of designated lottery games to fund the provision of facilities and the supporting infrastructure of the London Games.

Drivers: The continued rise in National Lottery ticket sales is further evidence of the ongoing success of Camelot’s strategy for growth, which is based on two key elements – diversifying the games portfolio, and improving access to lottery games through new channels of distribution. The key drivers of National Lottery sales in the nine months to December 30 were:

• EuroMillions: The nine months to the end of quarter three has also seen another strong performance from Camelot’s mega-jackpot EuroMillions game, which produced a jackpot of £123 million. The UK National Lottery created seven of the 20 top tier winners across Europe for the draw on 17th November – and generated more than £45 million for UK Good Causes across the 11-week roll series alone.

• Dream Number: The latest figures for the nine months to the end of Quarter three include the first full quarter of sales for Dream Number. Launched in July, Dream Number is the first National Lottery Draw-based game designated to raise funds for London 2012. Dream Number ticket sales have eclipsed those of Lotto Extra, the game it replaced

• Lotto: Ticket sales were driven by the second Lotto Triple Rollover in the history of the National Lottery on 14 October 2006, which delivered peak sales of more than 4 million tickets an hour

• Interactive Channels: Camelot runs the most successful interactive lottery in the world, with sales from new channels and ways to play National Lottery games continuing to make a growing contribution to revenues. Total interactive sales across national-lottery.co.uk, Sky Active and Play By Text for the nine months to the end of Quarter three were £212.5 million, an increase of £77.0 million or 56.8% on the figure of £135.5 million reported for the same period last year.

• A Camelot spokesperson said: "We are very encouraged by the continued growth in National Lottery ticket sales in the nine months to December 30, helping us to deliver millions of pounds more for the Good Causes, building on more than £19 billion raised by lottery players to date. In December we also passed a milestone 2000 lottery millionaires, a landmark in the history of The National Lottery.

"We have seen a particularly strong performance from our mega-jackpot EuroMillions game and from designated games in support of London 2012 which have now seen their sixth consecutive quarter of growth, raising more than £87 million for the London Games. Camelot continues to drive growth across both its draw-based games and the portfolio of scratchcards and Interactive Instant Win Games. Camelot now runs the most successful interactive lottery in the world – and recently passed a landmark 2 million players registered across National Lottery interactive services."