Lottery officials raise stakes
DALLAS – This is exactly what state officials had in mind last year when, over the grumbling of many regular players, they made the Lotto Texas game much harder to win.
Texas has gone nearly four months – 32 drawings – without a winner.
The jackpot has grown to record levels – an estimated $145 million for Saturday night’s drawing.
And that has people talking, and buying more Lotto tickets.
Gail Howard, who runs a lottery Web site and wrote a book on the subject, “Lottery Master Guide,” blames it all on the media.
Howard said lotteries across the country have been making their games more difficult for years in order to drive up jackpots, which in turn generates more buzz in newspapers and on radio and television. But the novelty of a $145 million jackpot may wear off.
“Pretty soon, it’s going to take a $1 billion jackpot to get the media hype,” Howard said.
The odds against winning Lotto Texas with a single $1 ticket used to be 1 in 25.8 million. In May 2003, the Lottery Commission added a bonus ball, which raised the odds to 1 in 47.8 million.
As the current Lotto Texas jackpot marched past the old record of $85 million, set in 2001, lottery officials couldn’t have been more pleased.
“Sales are jackpot-driven. We’re seeing that now,” said lottery spokesman Bobby Heith.
He noted that at peak frenzy before Wednesday night’s drawing, when the jackpot hit $120 million, stores statewide were selling 40,000 tickets a minute.
“The more we roll, the more revenue we generate for the state of Texas,” Heith said.
Many other states, including California and New York, and the multi-state Powerball and Mega Millions games have also adopted the bonus ball format to increase jackpots.
California changed the odds from 1-in-18 million to 1-in-41 million. Powerball is 1-in-120 million, and the odds of winning Mega Millions are an infinitesimal 1-in-135 million.
Critics say the longer odds may backfire, even with big jackpots.
“If they don’t win – they don’t have to know about odds – they eventually just give up,” Howard said.
Indeed, sales for Lotto Texas have fallen. Dawn Nettles of Garland, who runs a private Web site about the Texas games, said sales in the first 117 drawings under the new, harder game are down $119 million, or 18 percent, from the last 117 drawings under the old game with its better odds.
Lottery officials said sales for Lotto Texas have fallen because of competition from the big-jackpot Mega Millions game, which debuted in Texas in December. When sales from that game are included, the state expects 2004 sales from all lottery games, including the cheaper and popular scratch-off games, to top 2003 levels.
Whether the jackpot is $4 million or $145 million, the odds against winning with a single ticket remain the same.
“It becomes an attractive bet in some sort of theoretical way as the jackpot goes up,” said Michael Orkin, a statistics professor at California State University, Hayward, and author of “What Are the Odds.”
Orkin said lottery odds are terrible in comparison to other forms of gambling, but they hold allure because a $1 ticket can be worth a life-altering sum.
“There aren’t many other bets around where for $1 you can win $145 million,” he said.