oh dear (tm): Brits are refusing to buy lottery tickets for 'low' jackpots

[centurian]

It's a sign of times - a few million quid (even tax free) don't make one rich, one needs at least £10 mln - tax free, preferably

On a serious note, I think someone that wins £900K on the lottery could end up better off than someone that wins £2m over the long run.

Under a million - and I think people understand that the cash will make you very comfortable, but won't last a lifetime. Get good investment advise - average 4-5% returns, which is a very good top-up for the day job.

Yet someone winning "millions" - it's probably a lot easier to splash the cash, quit the day job, the obligatory gifts for friends and family - and after a few years, realise too late that the 1.5% bank interest they have been earning on their remaining 600K brings in less cash than a minimum wage job and will only fund their 100Kpa lifestyle for another few years.

[DodgyAgent]

I told the wife I wouldn't get out of bed for less than £20 mil

She told me she wouldn't get into bed for any less

[OwlHoot]

Gave up bothering when it went up to a whole £2!

"Tax on mean is failing because the mean are even meaner than Camelot thought they were."

FTFY

WHS. That price hike was psychologically disastrous.

and IMHO the quote should be:

"Tax on stupid is failing because the most stupid are not quite as stupid as Camelot."

[xoggoth]

Gave up bothering when it went up to a whole £2!

"Tax on stupid is failing because the stupid are not quite as stupid as Camelot thought they were"

"Tax on mean is failing because the mean are even meaner than Camelot thought they were."

FTFY

[NickFitz]

Quite so. The odds of winning these trifling jackpots is now much less than it was before, making the lottery even less attractive than it was.

Long term, though, they're going to see a sales boost. The key thing they changed was removing the limit to the number of rollovers allowed. Combine this with reducing the likelihood of anybody winning the jackpot, and you end up with much higher cumulative rollovers, which in turn drives ticket sales - those people who don't bother anymore in the first few weeks of the odds reduction will certainly go back to buying when there's £250,000,000 up for grabs, and it'll pull in people who haven't previously played but reckon that, for a chance of that kind of money, they might as well drop a tenner on it.

So, overall, they'll pull in less than they did for what until now have been normal jackpots, but those "trifling" normal jackpots will be a lot less common.

Remember, these people are neither stupid nor amateurs. They don't just make a change like that without doing the maths, and they know what's worked and what hasn't in the many other lottery markets around the world.

[OwlHoot]

Quite so. The odds of winning these trifling jackpots is now much less than it was before, making the lottery even less attractive than it was.

Also, who's to say they aren't manipulating the winnings on those colour/bingo things they introduced?

The numbers may be chosen by a physical random process that everyone can see. But the colours and number supplements are presumably chosen by computer, as is the decision of the values on the tickets. At least I presume that is so, even if one picks numbers instead of buying the misnamed lucky dips! So that aspect is totally closed and incestuous, and therefore potentially manipulatable.

[Platypus]

This month, Camelot changed the Lotto game by asking players to choose from 59 numbers, instead of 49

Quite so. The odds of winning these trifling jackpots is now much less than it was before, making the lottery even less attractive than it was.

[barrydidit]

It's a sign of times - a few million quid (even tax free) don't make one rich, one needs at least £10 mln - tax free, preferably

That's where undeclared BTL income comes in.

[AtW]

It's a sign of times - a few million quid (even tax free) don't make one rich, one needs at least £10 mln - tax free, preferably

[NickFitz]

Alternatively: due to the very unusual circumstance of there being 13 jackpots over £50M in the first six months of last year, sales had risen. Now that the frequency of large jackpots is reverting to the mean, sales are also returning to previous levels.

In other news, the chief executive of Camelot is now despised by his PR staff for failing miserably to point out that a decrease of 0.2% over the year is such a small proportion that most people probably wouldn't notice it at all if it was shown on a graph with a vertical scale of 0 to 100%, and certainly wouldn't describe it with the word "dip", which has connotations of a much greater decline than two thousandths of the total

[pr1]

makes sense, if someone considers the odds reasonable for a £2 ticket for a (say) £5m jackpot then logically when the jackpot gets to 50m people will buy extra tickets because the odds get better (more money for the same chance of winning (ignoring the fact there's more chance of sharing the jackpot if more people buy tickets)), so lots of people buy extra tickets

even people on here (cuk) start syndicates when the jackpots get high

if the jackpots don't get sky high, people stick with just their one ticket per week (for example), so less tickets are sold relative to periods when there are lots of rollovers

[WTFH]

"Tax on stupid is failing because the stupid are not quite as stupid as Camelot thought they were."

[OwlHoot]

Sales of draw-based sales at Camelot UK have fallen during the six months to the end of September, dented by waning interest in EuroMillions

A dearth of big money rollover jackpots so far this year has led to another fall in EuroMillions sales at Camelot UK.

The Lotto operator said that first-half EuroMillions sales slid 2.4pc to £717m, dragging overall draw-based sales at Camelot down by £40.6m to £2.2bn for the six months to September 26. Relatively fewer rollovers in the European lottery meant that ticket sales had fallen, said Andy Duncan, chief executive.

“We’ve only had three jackpots of over £50m in the last six months, in the first six months of last year we had 13 in the same period,” he said.

EuroMillions sales dipped by 0.2pc in the year to the end of March, the second straight annual fall.

Overall, National Lottery sales rose £145.7m to a record £3.6bn during the half-year, bolstered by strong digital growth. Smartphones and tablets now account for more than 35pc of all Camelot sales, and mobile sales leapt by 72pc compared with a year earlier.

This month, Camelot changed the Lotto game by asking players to choose from 59 numbers, instead of 49, and introducing a new “Millionaire Raffle”. There have been three draws so far under the new format, and Mr Duncan said that the changes had been well-received and spurred an “uplift” in trading.

Source: Brits are refusing to buy lottery tickets for 'low' jackpots - Telegraph

Chortle. Talk about completely bleedin' obvious.

Anyone who claims they buy lottery tickets not solely in the hope of winning the jackpot is a liar IMHO.

So doubling the price and reducing the jackpot was emptying an AK47 into both feet.

Greedy and Thick is a fatal combination - They should have left it exactly as it was when it started.

[AtW]

Sales of draw-based sales at Camelot UK have fallen during the six months to the end of September, dented by waning interest in EuroMillions

A dearth of big money rollover jackpots so far this year has led to another fall in EuroMillions sales at Camelot UK.

The Lotto operator said that first-half EuroMillions sales slid 2.4pc to £717m, dragging overall draw-based sales at Camelot down by £40.6m to £2.2bn for the six months to September 26. Relatively fewer rollovers in the European lottery meant that ticket sales had fallen, said Andy Duncan, chief executive.

“We’ve only had three jackpots of over £50m in the last six months, in the first six months of last year we had 13 in the same period,” he said.

EuroMillions sales dipped by 0.2pc in the year to the end of March, the second straight annual fall.

Overall, National Lottery sales rose £145.7m to a record £3.6bn during the half-year, bolstered by strong digital growth. Smartphones and tablets now account for more than 35pc of all Camelot sales, and mobile sales leapt by 72pc compared with a year earlier.

This month, Camelot changed the Lotto game by asking players to choose from 59 numbers, instead of 49, and introducing a new “Millionaire Raffle”. There have been three draws so far under the new format, and Mr Duncan said that the changes had been well-received and spurred an “uplift” in trading.

Source: Brits are refusing to buy lottery tickets for 'low' jackpots - Telegraph