$2 PB Jackpots Now Rising More Slowly Than $1 PB Jackpots Did.

We have now completed an 11th rollover and have a powerball jackpot at $177M.   A relatively recent example of the Powerball $1 jackpot system was between April 27, 2011 and June 01, 2011 where at the same point the jackpot was $200M.   (It was won at that point.)

Bigger and better may not be bigger and better all the time.

By playing fewer tickets people are getting less positive feedback with the small wins, I think, and over the long term this may cause enthusiasm for Powerball to decline further.

Very likely true Prob988.  It should be won this next time... 2 tickets each with just over 60M value...  and if it is, it will really hurt PB.

What PB is hoping (desperately) is to have a run that will make **IT** top dog - bigger than MM's run earlier this year!

Chaos theory would give the nod back to MM to have another big run and secure its top billing.

It's becoming clearer every drawing that the newest version of PB can't sell the number of tickets it once did as long as it's completing against MM with similar odds and payouts for half the price.

Well, let's here...and analyze a bit. Now gas prices can go up and we get less gas for the same dollar but, this cool with Lucky 'cause I GOTTA HAVE IT to get around. Same with food...I gotta eat. I DO NOT HAVE TO HAVE POWERALL IN MY LIFE...and for this matter, Mega Millions either with these odds. They seem, in my opinion, to be comparing these games to actual necessities in life! WTF are they smoking? 

This would be the opportune time to take a stand against all this madness. Why would any even reasonably thinking person agree to spend more money for the same odds Where's the fun in that? What's so exciting about it as they claimed it would be? If you don't stand for something, you'll fall for anything.

L.L.

I noticed that when the jackpot drawing come last night the jackpot was not even $164 million it was $158.8 million.  So powerball did not even sell enough tickets to get to the advertised jackpot.  So they raised it to $177 million which is a $18.2 million increase hopefully with the 4 days of sales they will be able to get to the advertised jackpot annuity.-weshar75

an easy remedy to the lacking powerball sales is to have those buy 10 get $3 promotions...i personally dont care for those promotions as they "force" you to buy for two draws instead of one...

but i have seen many a sucker fall for it...and nobody understands it the first time because it really is stupid or illogical

it would be interesting to see a comparison of sales by state as to revenue with the promotion versus without the promotion..the promotions are not universal.

Powerball had a promotion last month in New York...but not this month.

this month its Take five...although i have not "suckered" in to it yet...as i dont like to feel that i am being forced to buy for two draws...

weshar - i did not notice that the jackpot fell short of the advertised amount.  yikes!  that doesnt happen that often.  yet another good reason to take the cash value (yes i know they purchase an annuity and your money is 'locked' in)... take the money and run!  before PB falls! 

I haven't been paying close attention to the relative values of the cash and annuity amounts, but right now PB's cash value is just over 68% of the annuity value. I think it was closer to 65 or even 64% last time I checked. MM is just over 77.8%, which I think is also a bit higher than it was a while back. At 65% the annuity value would be $185.5 million, or $8.5 million more than what we're seeing right now, based on the reported cash value of $120.6 million.

The sales figures on <snip> indicate that PB should have had enough for a cash value of about $115 million as of the last drawing. If sales for this drawing match the last one the cash value should be about $130 million instead of the $120.6 that's currently listed.

What makes you think it should be won next time, especially with 2 tickets? If they sell 25 million tickets, which is a fairly reasonable number if the lottoreport figures for the last drawing are correct, there's about a 1 in 7 chance of a winner, and if it is won it would almost certainly be a single winner.

KYF - I hope you are right!

In THEORY, the cash value for Powerball would have been $115 million for last night's draw, but in REALITY, it probably was only the $107 million they advertised (the drop in annuity was probably because of falling interest rates), because PB has had to raid their jackpot fund to pay larger than expected payouts for their cash prizes.  Mega Millions is probably doing the same thing with their jackpots now too, because their pot increased by only the minimum $2 million annuity ($1 million cash), even though their sales should have supported a $3 million or $4 million increase in the annuity.

I certainly agree with you here. There's never any guarantee for a winner on any draw no matter how many tickets are sold. Each draw is completely separate from the next and a "no winner" streak can actually be indefinite. This is why lotteries enjoy the no winners...all they do is profit off of all the losing tickets sold...especially those who spent hundreds of dollars trying to "rope in" the winning combination.

Good post.

L.L.

AFAIK, they have to pay  for all those extra lower tier prizes out of the reserve fund or what would have been their profit. The rules specify what percentage of sales go to the prize pools for each level, with the jackpot getting about 32%. I may have missd it, but I never noticed any wiggle room  about that in the official rules. The reserve fund gets 2%, but I'm not sure if it's 2% of sales (4 cents per ticket) or 2% of the 50% that goes towards prizes (2 cents per ticket). Either way, it wouldn't account for more than about $4.5 milion of the $115 million figure. I definitely don't see it coming close to accounting for what looks to me like a $10 million discrepancy in the advertised cash value for the current drawing.