Powerball Sales at an 82 Month Low (in terms of tickets sold)

According to the TLC website, players purchased only 11.2 million tickets for last night's Powerball draw ($22.4 million in monetary terms, a five month low).  The last time fewer tickets were sold for a single drawing was for the draw of August 17, 2005, which sold only 10.5 million tickets, for an advertised jackpot of $13 million.  This also occurred when the matrix was 5/53 + 1/42, the advertised jackpot started at only $10 million and was paid in equal installments, the second place prize was only $100,000, and the third place prize was only $10,000, three game formats ago!  There is no way Powerball is going to continue with its $2 ticket price much longer.

Your absolutely correct ryanm!!!

Powerball has seen the error in it's ways.    

That's why there should be an unveiling of a "New And Enhanced" price of $5.00 per ticket, any day now! 

Forty mill for 2$ is still a good deal, but there seems to be a nationwide boycott going on.

Not when you can buy a chance to win MM's $75M jackpot for a dollar.

Yeah, that could work, IF THEY UPPED THEIR OPENING JACKPOT TO $100 MILLION and had $25 minimum increases, and rolled back to the 5/55 + 1/42 matrix!! ha ha ha

for a 2$ ticket I have a chance at a 33.2M$ jackpot on Saturday (6/30).

for a 1$ ticket I have a chance at a 57.5M$ jackpot on Friday (6/29).

WHAT were they thinking???

I've often wondered if it would help if the lower prizes (i.e. amount for Pball plus one, etc.) would be increased?  There must be a way to have the lower wins payout more, like a percentage of the jackpot (as in the PA Cash 5 game for 3 and 4 number wins).  I know from my experience that several members of the group I formed at work became very frustrated when we hit one number and the PBall when the jackpot was over $150 millions, and still only won $4 (same when we won a big $2 on MegaMillions when that jackpot was really high).  Perhaps this would help with ticket sales, since more people hit on the fewer numbers (even tho' we all wish for the big jackpots!).  Just a thought (from a newbie to the forum!).

I didn't even buy a ticket for last night's Powerball drawing. $2 per ticket for 1 in 175,000,000 odds is just plain ridiculous. I haven't been playing Powerball or Mega Millions that much lately. Every so often I'll get one ticket for one of them, but now I'm staying focused on Hoosier Lotto. 1 in 12,271,512 for $13,500,000 sounds pretty good to me, and I always buy at least 5 lines, so my odds are at least 1 in 2,454,302. Of course, that's before I apply any filters in my system. 1 in 2,454,302 isn't exactly good, but it's certaintly way better than Powerball and Mega Millions, and at $13,500,000, that's enough to retire.

With a starting $40 million jackpot and minimum of $10 million increase when the jackpot isn't won, it's obvious PB is for players who want the highest possible payoffs for their $2 bet. With only 3.14% of all the tickets sold winning anything, it basically comes down to betting $2 to win the jackpot or $1 million (regardless of the odds) or winning nothing.

Raising the smaller secondary prizes would increase the average play, but the extra payoffs would lower the size of the jackpots and it would take much longer before the ticket sales double or triple. In the last jackpot run which ended in a $241 million jackpot, ticket sales averaged about 13.5 million for the first six drawings and didn't reach 20 million until after 11 drawings with a $164 million jackpot. The run ended after 14 drawings when 33 million tickets were sold for a $241 million jackpot. For comparison, MM sold 78 million tickets when it's jackpot was $241 million in March which is $12 million more in sales.

To get the higher jackpots the players must sacrifice the lower secondary prize payoffs. Most Pick-5 games give much better secondary prize payoffs but the jackpots are around $100,000. Scratch-offs account for the majority of play in most states so even though the statistics show players prefer more payoffs, the lotteries offer huge jackpot "winner take all" games too.

Some states offered "roll down" versions of jackpot games when the jackpot reached a certain amount, the secondary prizes were larger, but their jackpots are still substantially lower than the PB and MM jackpots.