Is Powerball just going to rot away?Prev TopicNext Topic

• Raven62

  

  25

  New Jersey
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  June 28, 2005
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  May 6, 2019, 6:52 pm

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  In response to Think

  Quote: Originally posted by Think on May 4, 2019

  It is about time that they normally make changes to powerball but I have not heard any rumblings about it.
  
  I guess they are out of ideas and we are going to be stuck with a game that just rolls and rolls with few winners and no decent prizes.
  
  I tried doing a search but only found the old changes from over 3 and a half years ago.
  
  Powerball is getting super tiresome with very few jackpot prizes and few second prizes.
  
  Sigh, maybe with the super long roll times they are also doing super long change times now.
  
  I noticed that several states have changed/replaced/introduced new games but the multi states are flat and fizzless.

  

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• KY Floyd

  

  NY
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  October 16, 2005
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  May 7, 2019, 12:39 pm

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  "Billion Dollar Jackpots are fine but they should be done with Raffles."

  When PB set the record they sold about 635 million tickets for the record jackpot of $1.59 billion and  440 million tickets for the jackpot of $948 million. 30 months later MM only sold 370 million tickets for a jackpot of $1.54 billion. Those tickets only cost $2 each, and you can be positive the cost of the tickets had two effects. One was a huge influence on how many tickets players bought, and the other was how much revenue resulted from ticket sales. That revenue wa a bit under $1.3 billion for PB's record jackpot and 30 months later for MM's nearly identical (and higher advertised value) jackpot it dropped to a bit under $0.9 billion.

  Put on your thinking cap and tell us how  your proposed 1 or 2 billion dollar raffles each year are going to work.
• Think

  

  Marquette, MI
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  August 20, 2005
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  May 31, 2019, 10:49 pm

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  In response to KY Floyd

  Quote: Originally posted by KY Floyd on May 7, 2019

  "Billion Dollar Jackpots are fine but they should be done with Raffles."

  When PB set the record they sold about 635 million tickets for the record jackpot of $1.59 billion and  440 million tickets for the jackpot of $948 million. 30 months later MM only sold 370 million tickets for a jackpot of $1.54 billion. Those tickets only cost $2 each, and you can be positive the cost of the tickets had two effects. One was a huge influence on how many tickets players bought, and the other was how much revenue resulted from ticket sales. That revenue wa a bit under $1.3 billion for PB's record jackpot and 30 months later for MM's nearly identical (and higher advertised value) jackpot it dropped to a bit under $0.9 billion.

  Put on your thinking cap and tell us how  your proposed 1 or 2 billion dollar raffles each year are going to work.

  Powerball and Megamillions in their current forms are boring and take too long to win!  Who says you cant still have powerball and megamillions tickets for $2 but change them both to be better games and still have the billion dollar raffles?
  
  In case anyone hasn't noticed we have yet another top 25 jackpot on the Mega millions which is a common thing these days with longer and longer rolls and fewer jackpots being awarded.  Look at both game behaviors since the odds have gone insane.
  
  The two multi states have ruined the in state games and now the multi-states have gotten incredibly difficult to win to the point that there are 4 or 5 pots awarded per year at most for both games! (8 to 10 total)
  
  Come on!  At least with Billion dollar raffles you would know when it would be drawn and if you wanted a shot at a billion you could go for it.
  
  Why implode all the state  games just to have a rare Billion dollar jackpot here and there?
  
  According to your numbers, if the raffle tickets were $10, then you would have to sell (635/5) or 127 million $10 raffle tickets to fund the first pot you mentioned and (440/5)  88 million  and (370/5) 74 million tix to fund the other pots.  Do you not see how that is possible across all the jurisdictions in 3 or 6 month time periods??
  
  If they can't sell an average 1.77 million to 2.88 million tix per jurisdiction for a Billion buck (or more) raffle once, twice or maybe four times per year then there isn't much hope for the other games to get better anytime soon I would say.
• weshar75

  

  Mcminnville, Oregon
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  December 13, 2003
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  May 31, 2019, 11:09 pm

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  Mega Millions and Powerball are going to be around for a while longer because they are popular games to play for big money prizes.-weshar75
• KY Floyd

  

  NY
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  October 16, 2005
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  Jun 1, 2019, 12:14 pm

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  "According to your numbers ..."

  They're not my numbers. They're the numbers of the lotteries and the players, and you obviously didn't understand them.

  When PB offers another jackpot that's over $1 billion we'll see if anything changes, but right now our best data comes from MM's more recent effort. They came up short, but they told players they were offering a jackpot of $1.6 billion. Not a measly $1.0 billion, but $1.6 billion. And how did players respond to that offer? By spending just $740 million on tickets. The total revenue wasn't enough to cover the actual, smaller, jackpot. When the previous drawing offered a jackpot of an even $1.0 billion sales were $560 million, or 56% of the advertised jackpot.

  So let's suppose that the lotteries advertise a jackpot of an even billion dollars as a raffle. How much will players spend on tickets? If they'll bump the spending up to an even 60% of the advertised value that would be just enough to actually award the $1 billion prize (current rates would require 63%). That would leave zero for smaller prizes, which would almost certainly have a major impact on sales, making the 60% sales figure wildly unrealistic. More importantly it would leave zero profit for the lotteries. In fact it would leave them deep in the hole, because they'd have to pay perhaps $35 million in commissions to retailers  and they'd have a bunch of other overhead to pay for.

  In case it's another thing that you haven't considered, offering a guaranteed jackpot won't improve your chances of winning. If it takes 300 million $2 tickets just to generate enough revenue to raise the $600 million necessary to pay the jackpot prize the odds of winner are still 1 in 300 million. By the time you factor in a few smaller prizes and even a far more modest profit to the lotteries the chances of winning a $1 billion raffle prize are even worse than what players were offered with the current games.
• Think

  

  Marquette, MI
  United States
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  August 20, 2005
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  Jun 1, 2019, 7:46 pm

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  In response to KY Floyd

  Quote: Originally posted by KY Floyd on Jun 1, 2019

  "According to your numbers ..."

  They're not my numbers. They're the numbers of the lotteries and the players, and you obviously didn't understand them.

  When PB offers another jackpot that's over $1 billion we'll see if anything changes, but right now our best data comes from MM's more recent effort. They came up short, but they told players they were offering a jackpot of $1.6 billion. Not a measly $1.0 billion, but $1.6 billion. And how did players respond to that offer? By spending just $740 million on tickets. The total revenue wasn't enough to cover the actual, smaller, jackpot. When the previous drawing offered a jackpot of an even $1.0 billion sales were $560 million, or 56% of the advertised jackpot.

  So let's suppose that the lotteries advertise a jackpot of an even billion dollars as a raffle. How much will players spend on tickets? If they'll bump the spending up to an even 60% of the advertised value that would be just enough to actually award the $1 billion prize (current rates would require 63%). That would leave zero for smaller prizes, which would almost certainly have a major impact on sales, making the 60% sales figure wildly unrealistic. More importantly it would leave zero profit for the lotteries. In fact it would leave them deep in the hole, because they'd have to pay perhaps $35 million in commissions to retailers  and they'd have a bunch of other overhead to pay for.

  In case it's another thing that you haven't considered, offering a guaranteed jackpot won't improve your chances of winning. If it takes 300 million $2 tickets just to generate enough revenue to raise the $600 million necessary to pay the jackpot prize the odds of winner are still 1 in 300 million. By the time you factor in a few smaller prizes and even a far more modest profit to the lotteries the chances of winning a $1 billion raffle prize are even worse than what players were offered with the current games.

  Clearly I did not understand your post or your point!
  
  Reading over your post it is easy to miss whether you are talking about total sales or sales for the previous jackpot. 
  
  The fact that the advertised JP's were out of line with the actual JPs was not missed.
  
  At any rate the PB and MM are rotten awful games in their current forms and they are behaving more like quarterly raffles.
  
  Go to the Todd-O-Graphs of the Jackpots since the odds have changed and you will see when the odds have gotten harder the number of awarded jackpots have drastically gone down to about four or five per year for each game.
  
  PB and MM Might as well be raffles at this point.