Prize surpasses previous UK record of £42m and with no ticket matching six numbers on Wednesday, it must be won outright or shared out at the next draw

The record-breaking £50m Lotto draw has gone unclaimed despite a surge in ticket sales on Wednesday night, meaning that the prize must be shared out at lower odds on Saturday’s draw if it is not won outright.

Britain’s largest ever Lotto jackpot, the result of 13 successive rollovers, generated a spike in interest in the competition that threatened to crash the National Lottery website as punters logged on to buy their tickets.

The combination of winning numbers 57, 30, 50, 40, 08, 54 would have resulted in a prize of 50.4 million. But the highest amount won was 74,900 by two lucky tickets who matched five main numbers and the bonus ball, which was 13.

The previous record was £42m, which was shared between three ticket-holders in January 1996. Now an estimated £57.8m prize must be won or shared out on Saturday, National Lottery operator Camelot said.

The huge jackpot comes after a change to the competition’s rules, which added another 10 numbers for players to choose from – 50 through 59 – that slashed the odds on anyone getting all six numbers on their ticket from about one in 14 million to one in 45 million.

However, under additional new rules, the full jackpot will trickle down to the next tier of winners: those who have five numbers and the bonus ball. If that produces no winners the money will go to those with five numbers, then four numbers, and so on, until the prize is claimed.

A last-minute surge in ticket sales had been expected for Wednesday night’s draw, with Camelot saying it expected to sell 200 tickets every second during the hour before the draw closed, at 7.30pm.





Those trying to get hold of their tickets online, however, were met with the message: “We have really high levels of traffic to our site at the moment. This is temporarily affecting our online services.”

A spokesman for the National Lottery denied the website had crashed, but conceded it was running slowly in the face of “massive demand”. He said services would be likely to be running again soon and added: “Obviously people can still buy tickets in shops.”

Should a single ticket win Saturday’s prize, the holder would banked almost triple the record sums of £20.1m won by Iris Jeffrey from Belfast in 2004, the biggest ever winnings of an individual . The £22.5m shared by work colleagues Mark Gardiner and Paul Maddison from Hastings in 1995, was hitherto the biggest win on a single Lotto ticket.

Wednesday night’s draw was broadcast live on YouTube at 8.30pm, from the machine dubbed Arthur with ball set L8, selected by James Ott from Feltham. The winning numbers were 57, 30, 50, 40, 08, 54 and the the Bonus Ball was 13. The National Lottery Thunderball winning numbers were 34, 28, 32, 08, 04 and the Thunderball was 09.





An individual with a ticket matching all six numbers on Wednesday night would have won a fortune rivalling that of the singer Adele, who is worth £50m, according to the Sunday Times Rich List.