Sweet Millions has a "coverage" problem according to The NYS Lottery. Last year, when this thread first began, Jacal5 wondered why there are so few Sweet Millions jackpot winners. Jacal5 sent an e-mail to the NYS Lottery and asked why there were so few winners. The Lottery responded to Jacal's question, and their answer was posted in this thread on about page 3 or 4. Here's a a cut and past of the response:
Thank you for your e-mail.
It is still true that for $1, the Lottery's new Sweet Million game
offers the best odds of winning $1,000,000. The odds of 1: 3,838,380 to
win the jackpot of $1,000,000 cash is over 3 times better than the
average $5 scratch off game, 6 times better than the odds to win the
Lotto jackpot and over 45 times better than your odds to win the Mega
Millions jackpot. However it's always about the sales. Currently, we
have sales of about $500,000 per draw for the Sweet Million game, which
is only 1/8th of the odds to win the jackpot. A large number of these
plays are duplicative as many people play similar numbers such as 1, 2,
3, 4, 5, 6, which mean we are only experiencing coverage of less than 8%
of the total possible number combinations that can be drawn (3,838,380).
Number coverage can have a direct impact on the frequency of winning the
jackpot prize and this is why it has been a while since someone has won
the game. It is equally important to note that the money allocated to
pay jackpots, as well as all prizes, is just waiting to be won. The
odds do not change, and if more than 1 person wins on a draw, they each
get $1,000,000. Playing Sweet Million always gives the player the best
chance to win $1,000,000 as compared to any other game we have,
regardless if 1 person plays or if 100,000,000 play. Currently, low
playership is resulting in a dearth of winners and we are experiencing a
period of no jackpot winners but as odds and probability evens out over
time, we will have periods of more winners than expected within a given
level of sales.
The bottom line is the NYS Lottery doesnt sell enough SM tickets to produce a JP winner very often. If they only sell 7% of all possible 6 number combinations, that means 93% of the possible 6 number combinations go unsold. Obviously, the winning 6 number combinations are in the 93% of combinations that arent sold.