New lottery will give better odds to win

One of the owners of a new online lottery set for launch in Brazil this year – Pop-u-Lotto – says that many lotteries around the world are risking the alienation of punters through the ridiculously low chances of them scoring a big win.

Dan Engel, co-founder of Pop-u-Lotto points to the UK National Lottery in particular, claiming that operator Camelot has reduced the winning odds by increasing the number of balls from 49 to 59, which reduces the chance of a jackpot hit from 1 in 14 million to 1 in 45 million.

“There’s a huge risk that players will simply vote with their wallets and purses and find an alternative way to enjoy their leisure spend,” Engel says in a presser distributed this week. “My fear is that initiatives by operators to boost profits is blinkered and may well be to the detriment of the entire lottery industry.

“A cursory look at the internet forums quickly identifies disgruntled ex-players bemoaning the fact that it’s just too difficult to win what they refer to as ‘a normal lottery jackpot.’ When the changes were announced, the National Lottery’s official Facebook page was bombarded with complaints from players who insisted they had had enough. When you reduce the chances of winning you also extinguish the excitement.”

Engel’s opinion has been echoed by Professor Ian Walker, a statistician from the UK’s Lancaster University Management School, who commented: “Lotto has been with us for more than 20 years. It’s not unfair to say that it is a shadow of its former self. It is possible to make the game too hard to win so that players stay away.”

Pop-u-Lotto solution is create a raffle style offering, with a fixed number of tickets, which always delivers a winner and most importantly for the player, offers the best odds. According to its founders, the chances of winning a Euro 1 million prize are 1 in 600,000 for a Euro 5 stake, 1 in 100,000 for Euro 25, right down to 1 in 20,000 for Euro 100 stake.

This should be compared to state-run lotteries, which offer odds up to 1 in 622 million in the case of the Superenalotto, to win the main jackpot.

Engel says Pop-u-Lotto’s challenge is to educate the market and promote the better odds on offer. The company is doing this by using high profile guerrilla marketing, brand ambassadors, charity partnerships, creative PR and an intensive social media offensive.

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