National Lottery jackpot rolls on towards £60m

Wednesday's jackpot followed 13 consecutive rollovers

The National Lottery jackpot will roll over to an estimated £57.8m, must-win prize on Saturday after no-one won the record £50.4m on offer on Wednesday.

If no-one matches six numbers on Saturday, the next tier of winners will share the Lotto prize.

The winning numbers for Wednesday, drawn at 20:30 GMT, were 8, 30, 40, 50, 54, 57 and the bonus ball was 13.

Camelot said it had sold about 200 tickets per second in the hour before ticket sales closed at 19:30 GMT.

The previous largest National Lottery jackpot was £42m, which was shared between three separate ticket holders in January 1996.

Website crash

Its website crashed at about 18:00, making ticket purchases for the draw unavailable for about 10 minutes, although problems with logging on persisted for some time.

Parts of the website - including the results page and sign-in page - were down for much of Wednesday night with an error message saying they were "extremely busy".

Wednesday's jackpot is the result of 13 consecutive rollovers and follows the number of balls in the draw increasing from 49 to 59 in October.

This reduced the odds of a player getting six numbers from about one in 14 million to one in 45 million, mathematicians say.

Camelot argues its rule changes have increased the chances of becoming a millionaire with the introduction of a millionaire's raffle.

Lotto changes - behind the numbers

Users were greeted by this message on certain parts of the National Lottery website

New Camelot rules mean the jackpot prize is shared out in the first draw after the prize reaches £50m.

This means if no player matches all six numbers on Saturday, the prize will be shared between winners in the next tier where there is at least one winner - almost certainly those people who have five main numbers and the bonus ball.

Camelot said this would make it "some of the best odds players have ever had to win a multi-million pound, life-changing jackpot".

In Wednesday's draw, two tickets matched five numbers and the bonus ball - winning £74,900 each.

How past lottery winners have spent their millions

The biggest individual National Lottery win was by Iris Jeffrey in 2004

Former hairdresser Susan Herdman won £1.2m in 2010 and used her money to focus on her hobby of amateur motor racing, and has become a national champion.

Nikki Otterburn, a former fitness instructor, owns a riding school after her £2.2m win in 2001.

Edd and Michelle Edwards won £1.9m in 2008 - Michelle is now working at her own cake baking and decoration business.

Ted and Marilyn Newton bought a woodland for the use of local children and scouts after winning £7.9m in 2009.

Morris and Carol Worrall bought a beach hut with some of the £15m they won in 2005.

The biggest single-ticket National Lottery win was £22.5m, which was shared by work colleagues Mark Gardiner and Paul Maddison from Hastings in 1995.

The biggest individual winner was Iris Jeffrey from Belfast, who won £20.1m in 2004.

Although no-one has won more than Mrs Jeffrey on the National Lottery, her jackpot has been dwarfed in recent years by British winners of the Euromillions lottery.

Money for that prize comes from tickets sales in a number of European countries and the jackpot often rolls over for many more weeks.

The biggest UK Euromillions winners are Colin and Chris Weir, from Largs in North Ayrshire, in 2011 who collected £161.6m.

The couple gave large donations to several causes, including £1m to the Scottish National Party's campaign for Scottish independence.