Lottery sales remain pretty much stable in most jurisdictions from day to day, week to week, month to month, and year to year, with increases normally seen during the holiday season.
There isn’t too much of a fluctuation between a drop or increase in tickets sales, with sales mostly being sold to regular players and with some tickets sold to new ones.
But there are times when ticket sales can jump dramatically and all heck breaks loose.
Big Jackpots
Whenever a lottery’s jackpot rises to an amount that exceeds a normal regular level, people become a little bit money-happy and tend to go crazy.
For instance, in Canada, when lotteries reach 60 million dollars with many bonus wins of a million dollars each, people go into a frenzy and buy way more tickets than they usually do.
In the United States, 600-700 million dollars to 1 billion dollars or more for a jackpot, whips up people into an even greater frenzy, given that the U.S. has ten times the population.
But why the fuss?
So why does a jackpot that goes over the normal level create such a furor?
Well, for one thing, regular loyal players feel that the high jackpot justifies buying many additional tickets. They know that their chances of winning are still extremely thin, but are willing to spend the extra money to win the extra jackpot.
People who buy lottery tickets irregularly, or who don’t buy tickets at all, will now buy at least one ticket based on the belief that it is now worthwhile to buy a ticket due to the high win amount.
The higher the lottery jackpot, the more tickets that get sold.
High jackpot amounts and the buying frenzy they cause are beneficial to a lot of stakeholders in and out of the gaming industry.
- For the lottery operator, it means increased tickets sales, more income, and increased player participation, statistics that look very good to the regulator.
- For benefactors, the frenzy that produces the increased income to the operator translates into increased fund disbarment for them. Charities receive a bigger portion of the pie that lets them help more people.
- For retailers, the increased player participation means more income from lottery sales, more income from selling eligible winning tickets, the hiring of temporary staff to handle the increase in traffic, and the potential of a big bonus if they happen to be the one who sells the winning jackpot ticket. Huge jackpots are great incentives for retailers to advertise and increase sales.
- For the community, the money that is spent to buy the tickets for the large jackpot means more money coming into the community through the retailers, who disperse their own income to employees, who all then spend their money within the community, including buying tickets themselves at other retailers.
Whenever the lottery frenzy strikes, retailers experience an enormous increase in ticket sales.
Lineups begin and go to the back of the store, and sometimes out into the street and around the block in unprecedented numbers.
Many of those customers are first-time ticket buyers who are now overcome with the chance to win so much money that their entire immediate and extended families can retire.
And the lottery frenzy seems to cause an epidemic in that the more people who buy tickets causes lots of other people to buy tickets as well.
Use common sense
The next time your local or national lottery game jackpot rises to an unprecedented level, it’s ok to buy a few more tickets. But use common sense.
A few more tickets is not really going to increase your odds of winning at all, especially compared with everyone else who is buying extra tickets.
Buy your tickets early and don’t get caught up in the lottery frenzy.
If you win it, you will have more frenzy than you’ll know what to do with.