Charity lottery pays out ‚€2 million

Rehab Lotteries, which raises money for Irish disability charity Rehab, has paid out over ‚€2 milliion in prize money on its online bingo site since it was officially launched last November.

US owned New Media Lottery Services which provides the service to Rehab said last week that the site's lottery sales growth trend has "continued to exceed management's expectations into May, the first month of the new fiscal year." Rehab generated ‚€14.3 million from fundraising and lottery activities in 2004. The previous year the figure was ‚€14.8 million.

Rehab Lotteries said that it needed to explore new ways of fundraising since sales of scratch cards had remained static in recent years. John McGuire, managing director of Rehab Lotteries, said he expects bingo and lottery activities to be a "very important source of fundraising revenue" in the future.