Lottery on your mobile

National Lottery chiefs unveiled a new way to play today - by text.

Players can send their lines of numbers by mobile phone for any of the three main games.

Organiser Camelot hopes that the text messaging service will boost sales among the 18 to 24 age group and busy professionals who cannot be bothered to queue for tickets.

Although it is aimed at the texting generation, Camelot claims that a sophisticatedonline security system will stop under-16s being able to register to play. The biggest potential prize is the £50million offered by the EuroMillions game.

Richard Hurd-Wood of Camelot said: "Our research shows that play by text will appeal to infrequent and occasional Lottery players." To use the mobile service, which is available on all networks, players need to register an online account with a debit card.

They then text the name of the game they want to play and their numbers to 61111. Alternatively, they can be given numbers at random through a lucky dip. The cost of the entry plus a 20p charge for the text message will be automatically deducted from their account.

Players receive a confirmation message and will be contacted again by text if they have won a prize.

They will not be told the size of their winnings in the message, but told to log on to their online account. Prizes of less than £50 will be automatically credited to the player's online account. Wins of £50 to £500 can go either into the account or back on to the player's debit card, while bigger prizes will have to be collected from regional National Lottery centres.

The texting service can be used between 8am and 11pm all days of the week except during a draw.

The mobile service is the latest innovation by Camelot in an attempt to reverse the trend of sliding sales by making it easier to play.

About 600,000 people now use an online and interactive TV service to play with sales of around £1.5 million a week.

The next phase is the launch of tickets at supermarket checkouts, with a pilot scheme starting at some Tesco stores next year.

Camelot also unveiled latest financial figures showing that the new ways of playing, and the launch of games such as EuroMillions, do appear to be helping sales.

In the six months to 25 September ticket sales grew almost 5 per cent to £ 2.3billion.

The figures suggest that the upturn first seen last year, after six years of falling sales, is accelerating.

Sales of the core Lotto game were up only 0.7 per cent to £1.6billion but sales of the newer games soared 14 per cent to £748 million.