The Emirates Loto draw will rollover to a whopping Dh50 million next week after the main cash prize went unclaimed again. Three lucky winners walked away with Dh333,333 each in the third draw, drawn on Saturday night, matching five out of six numbers. The winning jackpot numbers were 6, 17, 20, 27, 32 and 39. The draw has only been running for three weeks but the big jackpot has remained elusive to players. “We’ve seen player numbers increase by 20 to 30 per cent every week,” said Paul Sebestyen, chief executive of Emirates Loto. However he believes the effect of Covid-19 on sales has been significant. "Naturally it hasn't been as great as we wanted because a good portion of the consumers haven't been able to go out to purchase our collectables in the retail environment," Sebestyen says. “Most of our sales are being driven by people visiting our website and also going to, either, Google or the App Store and downloading our app.” The Emirates Loto is a fatwa-approved, collectable scheme with the option to enter a weekly live draw. People can buy the collectable cards and then decide whether they wish to enter the draw free of charge. Customers can also choose not to receive the card and donate a portion of the purchase price to charity. The Emirates Loto is drawn live on a Saturday evening from a sound stage in Dubai’s Studio City. It is streamed live on YouTube and Facebook. It uses the best global practices to ensure propriety and transparency in the lottery process. “We have an independent adjudicator oversee the choice of the balls and the machines that choose the numbers,” said Nick Dutt, operations manager for Emirates Loto. Emirates Loto has three machines that choose the balls and two sets of balls, both the machine and the balls are chosen at random so the likelihood of calculated impropriety is infinitesimal. “We weigh every ball and check the sizes so that there can be no discrepancy. We then run five ‘dummy draws’ in the machine before the actual draw to ensure there is a random spread of numbers and balls,” said Dutt.
