The agency running the Powerball lottery might decrease the odds of winning the multimillion-dollar jackpot to stem a record-setting run of winners that is keeping jackpots small and, the agency says, causing ticket sales to plunge.
"To some extent, you try to ride it out. But I think we'll need to make some changes to the game pretty soon," said Chuck Strutt, executive director of the Urbandale, Iowa-based Multi-State Lottery Association, which runs the game. "We'll lose more than $400 million in sales this year."
Powerball is not available in Illinois, but tickets are sold in Indiana and Wisconsin. Outlets in 27 states, the District of Columbia and the U.S. Virgin Islands sold $2.3 billion in tickets in fiscal 2003-04, but are projected to sell $1.8 billion to $1.9 billion for the fiscal year that will end June 30, Strutt said.
Strutt said Powerball sales really pick up steam once the jackpot hits $100 million.
But is there really a problem?
Powerball had eight jackpots of $100 million or more from November 1997 until October 2002 and eight in the nearly 2-1/2 years since. That's when the Multi-State Lottery Association bumped the odds of winning the jackpot from one in 80 million to one in 121 million by increasing the number of balls used in the drawing.
Gail Howard, a lottery expert from Las Vegas, said higher jackpots may not be the answer.
''The people, they're getting used to having these $200 million, $300 million jackpots,'' Howard said. ''Pretty soon it will take a half-billion-dollar jackpot to get even a welfare recipient out of the house to buy a ticket.''
Strutt didn't say how the game might be tweaked.
PB began in 1992, not 1996, when the Big Game started.
>One expert says changing the game might be unnecessary. ''The expectation that they'll wind up with 17 winners this year because they've got 12 so far assumes that the process is linear and it's not. It's random,'' said Bruce McCullough, an associate professor at Drexel University. ''This could be the year they'll have 20 winners -- and there's nothing they should do about it. It's entirely possible they would be changing to fix a problem that doesn't exist.''
I agree with this. Powerball's Stutt does not give the information needed to make a rational comparison between the time when jackpots weren't being hit and now when they are supposedly being hit too often. He needs to disclose the number of tickets sold and number & percentage of combinations covered for each drawing in the sequence after a jackpot was hit. If the numbers for the first 5 drawings after a jackpot was hit are about the same then vs. now, then it would be just chance they've been hit more lately.
They can say "Screw the math, there's too many winners, not enough profits, welfare mothers tuning out, $10 million looks so boring on the billboards, we're gonna change it anyway". But they have to admit they are changing it on a run of luck that could (and will) go the other way. Over time there will be $200 million jackpots again as the odds correct the imbalance, but greed doesn't wait for odds to correct over time.
If Mega Millions is making the jackpot even harder to hit soon, PB needs to do the same.
Yeah, but if Mega Millions changes the odds, they'll have higher jackpots and even less people will play Powerball. I myself have played Powerball only once since the beginning of the year because Mega Millions and even the Illinois Lotto have had larger jackpots.
''The expectation that they'll wind up with 17 winners this year because they've got 12 so far assumes that the process is linear and it's not. It's random,'' said Bruce McCullough, an associate professor at Drexel University. ''This could be the year they'll have 20 winners -- and there's nothing they should do about it. It's entirely possible they would be changing to fix a problem that doesn't exist.''
I agree.
Simple answer. Boycott PB and MM. Play your states lottery (especially when the jackpot is higher). The jackpot will satiate you... unless you're that greedy.
Many states with Powerball aren't large enough to have their own rolling jackpot games, and the few that do rarely, if ever, see a jackpot at $10 million from their own games. Heck, most of those in-state lotto games don't even see a $5 million jackpot.
Well changing hot lotto to a 6/49 format would fix that.
Powerball has been adding states but doing nothing to address that. They also need to change the current lame rules regarding record jackpots. If they want to keep their current game it would only tick off the current member states as they look at the falling sales. I just wonder if they have had any meetings with the current states about the status of the game and any possible changes.
Mega Millions and PB are much better than NY Lotto 6/59 (terrible lower-tier prizes) and Mass Megais bad$ (still annuity-only).
>They also need to change the current lame rules regarding record jackpots.
What are the lame rules?
States and casinos that make their money off gambling don't like the word might, they want a steady flow of predictable income and they'll change the rules to make that happens.
RJOh
I agree with prof McCullough. We might have 20 jackpot wins this year. Yet, changing the matrix might not be necessary. A random game like Powerball, with it's current matrix, might begin a record setting jackpot run at any time. Conversely, it might have a series of frequent jackpot hits as we have recently been experiencing. It's all random and this summer we might also be discussing the Powerball record breaking jackpot that has just been set.