Pretty funny.......I've read a few articles like this over the years and it seems to me that they all have one thing in common - they were all written by people who don't understand what lotteries are all about.
In Australia, each Thursday sees the drawing of Powerball, which is similar to Mega Millions except it's 5-from-45 and 1-from-45, which makes the odds of selecting all 6 numbers a shade under 55 million to 1. The jackpot (or division 1 as it's called over here) starts at 2 million Australian dollars on week 1 and has gone as high as $A30 million on three occasions (which happens after 6 rollovers). So the most we have gone so far is 7 draws before someone has won the jackpot.
Contrast that with US Powerball and Mega Millions which have, on occasion gone as many as 18 draws before a winner has surfaced. This is mostly if not all due to the longer odds (although this is offset somewhat by your larger population and consequent number of games played). And that's the point !!
Because of the longer odds, your games tend to have more infrequent big winners but.....you also have prizes of a size that we can't possibly compete with. The other thing is that, as the prizes snowball in US lotteries, more people start to play and the jump in prize money increases with each draw and THAT is what we play for - the big one !! (and the bigger the better).
Give me the long odds any day.....that's what the dream is all about !!