A massive, multi-country lottery with $500 million jackpots is expected to launch within four years
Camelot, operator of the United Kingdom's lottery, has been in talks with firms in 48 countries, including Australia and the US, to launch a global draw.
The plans involve a monthly game creating up to 100 millionaires plus a once-a-year super prize — likely to be on a holiday such as New Year.
They are being drawn up in response to the public's love of big-prize draws.
The National lottery launched in 1994 under the phrase 'It could be you'. It has seen Lotto ticket sales fall by £105 million to £2.75 billion (US$4.84 billion) last year, its lowest sales in a decade.
Meanwhile Euro Millions, which operates across nine different countries, has seen its UK sales up by 10 percent to just under £500 million (US$880 million).
Euro Millions' biggest jackpot was £125 million (US$220 million) in 2006, compared to the domestic draw's top prize of £42 million (US$74 million). However, the comparison does not take into account the fact that Euro Millions is much harder to win than the domestic UK Lotto game.
David Forrest, Professor of Economics at the Centre for the Study of Gambling at the University of Salford said, "With a lottery you are selling a dream to the public.
"If a product comes along with a bigger dream, people will switch to it."
According to the British professor, American lottery players abandon state lotto jackpot games when a multi-state game is available.
"In the US, if you offer people a multi-state game with a bigger payout, they don't bother with the local lottery."
A spokesman for Camelot said plans to develop the international lottery were going well, but added there are no plans to drop the national draw.
"'Over the last five years there has been an 8.5 percent (£391.8 million) increase in sales.
"This helped overall returns to Good Causes rise to more than £1.35 billion (US$2.38 billion), bringing the total raised by National Lottery players to over £21 billion."
The National Lottery will be contributing almost £2.2 billion (US$3.9 billion) towards the London 2012 Olympics, of which £750 million will come from specially designated lottery games.
Many people around the globe ,have found a more easier ways to win the lotterey-with the help of Gail Howard Books and the LP .
Those who dont win are the ones 'who play without considering certain factors as outlayed very clearly in Certain Lotto Books and the LP.
Back to the topic....I think a global draw will be a great idea.
Sounds interesting. I wonder if it's a ball drop game or computerized? I don't envy the people who have to set up the logistics for this game. Where to have the draw? do you more the machine? Is payment Anuuity or a Cash Option? Would just be insane to win that much money!
I bet "Pumpi" is jumping up and down and giggling like a schoolgirl (no offense), he's wanted this for so long.
I don't know why don't they call it Global Lottery instead of International Lottery....Anyways i disapprove of this lottery, because i thought they were paying billions and billions of dollars as jackpot...For example i thought 1 winner was going to win 20 billion dollars for example...And that's the way it should be...
Japan has a Jumbo Draw that pays 350 million dollars (more than half of the 500 million) and that's just 1 country...So the entire world should the winner should get paid like 5 or 7 billion dollars...Why don't they have it...
Honestly when i first heard of it i thought it was 1 trillion dollars they were paying as jackpot...
Anyways this people always do the lotteries to suit themselves they do it because they are affraid of reprecursions...
This Global lottery surely can give someone 5 billion dollars as jackpot, but the people in power do not want that...They are affraid of selecting a nobody to have that much power...Is called prejudism/racism whatever you want to call it...Anyways nothing coming from England is good...
500 million the U.S can get a 500 million jackpot once or twice a year if they combined Powerball & Megamillions and join all the states remaining and charge 2 dollars per ticket...And actually it will not get to 500 million but instead it will get to 1 billion 500 million at least in the USA......So what are you telling me? that the U.S can draw bigger jackpot than the entire world combined...And this jackpot is going to cost how much? 50 dollars a ticket...So again what are you telling me...
I'm undecided on this yet. They didn't provide much detail on the proposed lottery. And what's with one big draw a year? Will tickets for that draw cost more? Will they set aside money from regular draws for it?
$1 Trillion is way too high, considering the US GDP is $12 trillion and the world's is closer to $55 trillion
But I agree...if there is going to be an international jackpot it should be in the billions.
The problem, however, is we think our multi-state lotteries have bad odds, imagine what an international lottery would be like.
I'd rather have a national lottery, perhaps by merging MegaMillions and Powerball. Start at $40 million and go up. We'd approach $1 billion jackpots and the odds would probably approach 300 million to one.
i think the GDP of the world is a lot more than 55 trillion...But i am not here to argue..I don't know actually but i think is like 70 trillion but i may be wrong..
I don't think people are going to pay attention to the odds, they are going to pay attention to the jackpot the bigger the better provided that is Once a year...But one thing i think will happen is that they will play mostly 1 or 2 tickets not more than that if the tickets cost 50 dollars...
I am against any mergings of these multi state lotteries. If anything I wish some of these states would scale down and disconnect from these multi state lotteries. Powerball and Megamillions cut into the state jackpots. Here in CT, the lotto jackpot takes so long to get up to even 2 or 3 million because so many people are playing Powerball. And on top of that hardly ever is there a Powerball winner from CT. And it will be worse in January when Florida joins PB. It will reduce state jackpots in CT and Florida, among other states.
Does anybody really need to win 500 million? Isn't 5 million enough? Even after taxes a 5 mill jackpot would still make you a multi- millionaire. Isn't that enough? Most people playing the lottery are poor(like me) or struggling to stay middle class. 5 mill would be more than enough for me to start living the good life.
SC
And believe most regular lottery players would be more than satisfied winning $5 to $10 million. Most the states selling $20 raffle tickets sold out quickly because there were more chances to win $1 millon.
When Powerball makes their changes in January the overall chance of winning something will be lowered but will still be over 1 winner for every 30 tickets sold. With huge number of possible combination, we won't see many time when 3, 4, or 5 players split a jackpot.
Nonsense.
Can you imagine a terminal for a global lottery at your local neighborhood store next to your national lottery terminal machine because lotteries are that important to survival.
this seems to come up every year or two, i wish they would get on with it and stop yapping about it. either give us a world wide lotto. or go away. I dont think it would be that hard to implement, mainly just printing new entry coupons and programming the new game onto the computer. taxes would be paid on based on the local the ticket was sold.
As the article said, people drop the smaller state games for the larger multi state games. Thats the price state lotto pays for getting in on the big draws. Ill take any win i can get, bigger the better.
i for one would play, just never expect to win.
Stack,
I agree with you about the raffles. I wish CT would have a raffle, so I wouldn't have to travel out of state to play one. I would be plenty happy just winning 1 mill, plus with the raffles you know when the numbers are drawn there will be a certain number of jackpot winners, unlike a lotto game that could drag on for months with no jackpot winner.
SC
The odds against hitting the jp on something that is designed to produce those size jps is going to stagger the players when they finally see it. Personally, I wouldn't bother playing. Five hundred million is way, way WAY more than anyone needs anyway.
When MegaMillions and PowerBall made their last matrix changes, there were talk of a possible $500M jackpot but it never happened. I'm sure when PB changes its matrix again in January, there will such talks again. There would be no advantage for any state to join an international game as long as PB and MM are available.
The problem is jackpots have to start out small because no state or country is going to contribute more to the jackpot then they can recover in tickets sales for each drawing and the odds of winning something have to be good enough to attract players while the jackpot is small so it's unlikely this game would be much different then what is already available in the states.
I agree with RJOh.
I also think this will create a lot more lottery scams.
A $20 raffle ticket gives us 1 chance to win one of the five or six $1 million prizes and for the same $20 we can get twenty chances to win one multi-million dollar prize playing a jackpot game. The difference with raffle games is that five or six tickets are guaranteed to win and there is a chance in jackpot games that no ticket will have the winning numbers.
There are pros and cons for both, but it really comes down to player preference of which is the better bet.
I don't agree that Gail Howard books help people win; they have wheels that get you to play multiple tickets which would increase your odds anyway even if they were multiple QP instead. I think one suggestion in the booklet said to "hang around lucky people" and that one method would guarantee you would win something but it required that you matched the Bonus Ball and not giving any help on how to match it.
I would play a "World" Lottery if it paid me in $ and not Stonesylvanian Krupeks or Ameros and hopefully the HQ or claim center is here and not Upper Slobovia. Headline: "World Lottery Winner dies after being bitten by tsetse fly while claiming winnings at World Lotto HQ in..."
Anyway, we had Mega 390M not too long ago. I wonder where the taxes are paid to, The Global Community?
I would guess the terminal could be the same one the store already uses but depends on what the matrix is. Betslips are running out of room, soon they will be the size of tablecloths to accommodate all the extra numbers! They don't say how much 1 ticket is? Say it is $1, the pot is $500M, then probably the odds are "only" 4 or 5 times that of PB or MM, but that will be pushing 1 billion to one! Due to space constraints on betslips I would think to have 6 or 7 white balls and the usual 1 or even 2 bonus ball(s). One thing they really must do is with those odds there has to be a reasonable chance to win smaller prizes even matching 2 numbers or charge more per ticket. Also I will assume they are not stupid enough to have this be computerized!
And yes the PB and MM should merge (as Powerball I would hope) because I'm tired of spending $ to go to PA to play PB. The only catch is if they merge they might significantly raise the matrix or else the jackpots will never get far past $100M.
When a state has a raffle for several $1M prizes, they are putting out the money up front and gambling that they will recover their money and make a profit on ticket sales. I can't see any group ever putting up a $500M jackpot and gambling they will sell enough tickets to cover the prize and make a profit too.
This International game will be more like Spains "El-Gordo" (I think that is what it is called) There isn't just going to be one winning ticket, there is going to be thousands. I have always wanted a game like that. But international is going to be crazy. The logistics along are going to take years to figure out. Different currencies, different languages. It will be nice to see but a pain in the rear to get started.
Brad
If I was making the choice between which game to play based on how much I could potentially win, Mega Millions is the obvious choice and a International game with a $500 million jackpot would be better yet. They designed the games with more combinations making it more difficult to win by a small weekly play and increase the jackpots after each drawing so hopefully there will be more play on the next game. The odds of hitting the jackpot are exactly the same whether it's for $12 or $300 million, but the game sort of creates the illusion because as more combinations are played in each drawing, the chances of it being hit are increased. The only real guarantee would happen if all the combinations are played, but even if it does happen, the odds on any one ticket winning are still exactly the same as they were when the jackpot was $12 million.
Three days a week I have the choice to play any or all of 7 different online games and there are 8 games on the other four days. I can justify playing Mega Millions twice a week because of the huge jackpots but realistically my chances of winning a jackpot are very small. It really comes down to what can I reasonably expect to get back playing any game based on how much I can afford to play. I don't play all the games every day, but have played two of them in the same drawings many times. And the regular drawings are 7:29 so I still have the time if I make a small hit to take a chance on MM.
Last night the Rolling Cash 5 jackpot was $301,000 for matching 5 of 39 numbers so I had the choice of playing it or I could try to win $250,000 for matching 5 of 56 numbers playing MM. That choice isn't always that easy because the average RC-5 prize is usually around $120,000. It's not exactly a reasonable expectation to match 5 numbers in either game on the next draw with a $10 wager so I'll probably have to make many more $10 wagers trying to win a jackpot. When we first started playing lottery games we didn't think in terms of future wagers and future losses but after years of playing, it's more likely that most players will lose money chasing jackpots.
To limit our losses for future play, the overall chances of winning anything tells us what to expect. The overall chances of winning any prize in MM is 1 in 40 and the odds of that one chance winning $10 is 844 to 1 and 306 to 1 win $7. It's more realistic to expect to win back $2 or $3 for every $40 we bet and expect to lose most of our bet.
The total cost of play is much less chasing a 6 figured jackpot but winning a $100 grand won't help the player that needs $100 million to buy their own city or a small country.
The lotteries do the research before and have a good idea of how many raffle tickets they should expect to sell. The Florida and Michigan raffles sold out quickly and Ohio didn't sell all of the tickets in its first raffle drawing. But since the total ticket sales were more than they paid out, they still made a profit.
Good point...
like 2 years ago someone gave me the formula for calculating the odds of a game configuration with 2 bonus balls,(i lost the formula now, will like to know it again)....I realized and noticed that the range of the game with 2 bonus ball could be extremely small with 2 bonus ball and yet it will have the same odds as a very large range with 1 bonus ball...For example, this are not the exact odds, is just for the sake of argument and better explain what i am saying...For example a Pick4/16 + Pick1/6 + Pick1/9 will have the same odds as a Pick6/40 + pick1/20....or a pick6/49
Despite that the first configuration is from 1-16, while the other is from 1-40 and the other is from 1-49....So i guess they could use 2 bonus balls or 3 bonus balls and reduce the number of balls on the betslip...That was just 2 bonus imagine now 3 bonus numbers? It will surely reduce the number field....I think they will have to do this if they want for all the numbers to fit on the betslip...
about the jackpot of this Global lottery....They forget that if they pay 500 milllion to the person, 200 million will go on taxes leaving the person with 300 million and if that person divorces he is left with 150 million dollars plus child support so basically the Entire world strain itself to get 150 million a jackpot that Powerball gets every years and this lottery is going to be once a year also just like Powerball, so you are basically comparing it with Powerball, when actually this Global lottery supposes to be bigger than Powerball....Again it just prove that the lottery doesn't research their games nor research the impact their games will have...
Again this lottery should have been in the billions..At least 5 billion...
If this global lottery was in the U.S they will have had to pay 250 million in taxes, leaving them with 250 million and pay another 125 million on taxes leaving the person with 125 million...And suppose the person divorces his wife, he is left with 64 million....So from 500 million to 64 million, how fair is that...All that hustle just for nothing...What does a 60 million dollar millionaire can do for the economy? However if it was a billionaire, he could open up all sort of bussiness, practices, hospitals, specialized clinics and help the economy of a country and let's wait until the bussiness grow...What can a 60 million dollar person do? Only with his 60 million buy 20 million dollar house, 20 million for his family and 20 million in the construction of a building...Did i mentioned the law suits that comes with been rich?...Again the lottery does not research their games as they should....
5 or 10 Million take home, I can sleep at night. $500 Million? NO THANKS!
The story just says $500 million or more. It does not give us any insight on the rarity that amount will be reached. For example, it doesn't give us the size of the matrix, so we don't know how it compares to Powerball and Megamillions as far as odds go. For all we know, the odds of winning the jackpot could be 1 in 800 million and the starting jackpot could be $100 million.
me too...
"In the US, if you offer people a multi-state game with a bigger payout, they don't bother with the local lottery."
BS, if they get large enough I play them for the better odds. In fact I play local lotteries far more than power rip off. But with a global lottery it also increases the chances of multiple winners. But $500 and up would be sweet.
tax is an interesting problem. here in australia the gov getes its tax by taxing everyone who buys a ticket. thats right 1/11th of all gambling wagers goes straight to the fed gov as a gambling tax. so when aust. buys a international lotto ticket, We will pay our tax at the terminal, all the buyers will pay tax. doesnt matter if its won here or not. In usa tthe gov will only get tax income when the ticket is actually won there!
now it depends on whaqt you think is fairer, all the losers paying tax and the winner not paying it. so the gov gets their cut. or the winner paying the tax.
personally i dont think it should matter, Just keep it the way it already works in the juresdiction the ticket is bought and won in. i mean the tax i pay is 9c on ea $1 bet , i can live with that. if i win ,$1 mill , ive paid my 9c tax.
I think tax should be handled at local level.
now price
with international exchange rates always changing, the major location playing should be the basis of price and other countries should have a quate mechenism for when you want ot buy a game. like if u want to get a check cut on a forign bank you get buy or sell price based on the daily rate. same for international lotto. The unlucky areas that doesnt have sell the most tickets. there would be a daily ticket price quoted at the terminal. when u go to buuy a ticket, the machine would print a quote before the sale for you to approve of the cost.
now if u lived in either USA or europe, well one of those 2, you would always pay the same price as the price will be based on their dollar. the rest of the world would have the varying price.
Considering they can't even get Germany or Italy to join Euromillions I really don't see this happening.