National Lottery app shutdown as UK players hopeful for jackpot left waiting

Down Detector shows hundreds of people have reported outages ahead of this weekend’s triple rollover

The jackpot in Saturday’s Lotto will be an estimated £7.3 million following a triple rollover (PA Wire)

Hundreds of people were unable to access the National Lottery app on Thursday morning after planned maintenance work.

Down Detector, a website that monitors service outages, reported a surge in users finding issues with the lottery app and website between 5am and 8am this morning.

Some players trying to visit the site are met with an apologetic notice saying the National Lottery’s online services are “temporarily unavailable” and requesting patience.

It comes as players attempted to check their numbers and buy tickets ahead of a huge prize in a triple rollover this coming weekend.

The jackpot in Saturday’s Lotto will be an estimated £7.3 million after Wednesday night’s prize was not claimed.

One ticket holder did scoop a £1 million prize after matching five out of six numbers and the bonus ball. The winning Lotto numbers were 07, 20, 33, 50, 51 and 57, with the bonus number 44.

Draw machine Merlin and set of balls nine were used.

One person won the top £350,000 prize for matching five out of five numbers in the Lotto Hotpicks – which uses the same numbers – and another player won £13,000 by matching four out of five numbers.

In Wednesday’s Thunderball draw, no-one won the top £500,000 prize for matching five numbers and the Thunderball, but there was one winner of the £5,000 prize for matching five numbers.

The numbers were 16, 18, 27, 29 and 37, with the Thunderball 05.

An Allwyn spokesperson said: “The National Lottery website and apps were closed overnight for planned maintenance and re-opened again just before 8am on Thursday. We appreciate players bearing with us and wish them the best of luck in this weekend’s draws.”