For two days they were multimillionaires without knowing it. But yesterday two British ticketholders woke up to the knowledge that they were the country’s biggest lottery winners and would each receive £45,570,835.50 this morning.
The £90 million prize from Friday’s EuroMillions draw, the result of nine weeks of rollovers in nine countries including Britain, went unclaimed until the lottery operator Camelot announced that two British tickets held the winning numbers.
Yesterday the winners came forward after realising that they had beaten odds of one in 76,275,360 to take the jackpot.
No further details will be released until the claims are verified, but provided they are genuine the two winners are set to enter the same financial league as Kate Moss, Jamie Oliver and Sir Cliff Richard. This is because, if the tickets belong to individuals rather than syndicates, they will both be catapulted into the Sunday Times Rich List, the first British lottery winners to appear there, and will be able to afford to buy Portsmouth Football Club or a 40-acre island in the British Virgin Islands.
Even if they simply put the money in savings accounts they can expect an income of more than £100,000 a year from the interest.
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Buying Picasso’s 1934 portrait Femme Ecrivant would set them back a mere £14 million, leaving £31 million to spend on additional masterpieces. If, like one previous lottery winner, they prefer to opt for a £2,000-a-day drug habit, they will not run out of money for 62 years.
Alternatively the two could club together to bid for a 20 per cent stake in Camelot, the lottery operator, of which 80 per cent is currently on sale. Bidders, who included Sir Richard Branson, believe that would be a wise investment given the rising sales of lottery tickets in the recession.
The National Lottery celebrates its 15th anniversary this month, having created 2,300 millionaires since its first draw on November 19, 1994.
Past lottery winners advised the two new members of the millionaires’ club to take time out before making any decisions. Not least of these decisions will be whether or not to go public.
About 25 per cent of winners choose the celebratory press conference with champagne and a giant cheque, according to the National Lottery. The rest embark on what may be a futile battle to keep their millions out of the public eye.
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“If they decide not to go public, then they have to create stories to explain their riches. That can be quite stressful,” said Simon Horne, a spokesperson for Camelot. “Or if you’ve got children of a certain age you have to decide whether to lie to them or whether you trust them not to tell.”
Once the winners have drunk their fill of champagne, they will be introduced to one of the Camelot winners’ advisers, who will help them to deal with what the company describes as “this unusual experience”. The adviser will help the winners to fend off the queues of private banks, financial advisers and long-lost relations.
They may also wish to seek the advice of Angela Kelly, the country’s previous biggest winner. The former Royal Mail worker won more than £35 million in 2007.
Mark Dampier, from the financial advice group Hargreaves Lansdown, said: “With that amount of money you would want to seriously start thinking about employing full-time people to manage it ... If you are 25, you have got a hell of a long time to plan for and you need to be thinking about the stock market, about property. But if you are 75 I would be out for a good time, put some money in cash deposits and have the time of your life.”