National Lottery website users reporting problems ahead of record £57.8 million jackpot draw

'Whenever you feel like letting people access the site to play, that would be great'

400 people per second will try and buy tickets this evening

Parts of the National Lottery website appear to be crashing ahead of tonight's record-breaking £57.8m jackpot.

After an unprecedented 13 rollovers, the jackpot is now larger than ever before in the Lottery’s history, and under new regulations it must be claimed in a draw at 7.30pm tonight.

But people are reporting that they cannot view the numbers on their already-purchased tickets or make bulk purchases, while some people are having difficulties purchasing tickets at all.

The Independent was able to buy a ticket, but could not view the numbers once it had been purchased. Instead, a message was displayed reading: “SORRY: An unexpected error occurred and we could not process your request.”

These issues are a particular problem for people gambling in syndicates, who are trying to co-ordinate their purchases.

The website also crashed as a £50 million jackpot went unclaimed on Wednesday night, buckling under the strain of visitors trying to purchase 200 tickets a second in the final hour before the draw closed. Would-be gamblers were met with a message reading: “We have really high levels of traffic to our site at the moment. This is temporarily affecting our online services.”

And with Camelot predicting an onslaught of up to 400 purchases a second in the final hour before tonight’s 7.30pm draw, it seems likely that the website will once more struggle to keep up with demand. Camelot sent an email to website subscribers this morning, recommending that they make their purchases as early as possible to beat the rush and avoid disappointment.

But people on Facebook and Twitter report that they are already having issues using certain sections of the site:

"Whenever you feel like letting people access the site to play, that would be great," added one Facebook commenter, while another wrote that she had been trying to view her ticket since last night without success.

However, Camelot spokesperson Rob Bright denied that the site was currently experiencing any issues, other than a slightly reduced running speed.

As another Camelot spokesperson pointed out on Wednesday, lottery tickets can still be bought in person from any one of 37,000 shops and retailers.