Something I have mentioned in the past on my lottery players advantage blog, is the very exciting news that Camelot is planning to launch a new GLOBAL lottery. Over the last year the rumours have been flying around and people have slowely been learning bit and bobs about what the new lottery game could involve. Remember nothing yet is set in stone, and so it could all change.
It's going to be a massive, multi-country lottery with estimated lottery jackpots of $500 million, and its expected to be launched within the next four years Camelot, operator of the United Kingdom's National lottery, has been in talks with firms in 48 different countries around the world, including Australia and the US (although how this effect the USA law on gambling outside of America beats me!), to launch the new global draw.
The plans involve a monthly game creating up to 100 millionaires plus a once-a-year super prize — likely to be on a holiday such as New Year.They are being drawn up in response to the public's love of big-prize draws. We all know what happens when the euro millions lottery is a superdraw or a £100 million draw, everyone goes crazy buying tickets really hoping to win a monster prize.
The UK National lottery was launched in 1994 under the phrase 'It could be you'. It has seen Lotto ticket sales fall by £105 million to £2.75 billion (US$4.84 billion) last year, its lowest sales in a decade.
Meanwhile Euro Millions, which operates across nine different countries, has seen its UK sales grow by 10 percent to just under £500 million (US$880 million). So it seems that we as lottery players, love the big prize draws. And if this is correct then it makes perfect sense to create the global game which can have huge jackpot prizes every month.
Euro Millions' biggest jackpot was £125 million (US$220 million) in 2006, compared to the domestic draw's top prize of £42 million (US$74 million). However, the comparison does not take into account the fact that Euro Millions is much harder to win than the domestic UK Lotto game.
The lottery basically sells people the idea of winning a dream life changing amount, so some people think that if a product comes along with a bigger dream, people will switch to it.
According to the British professor, American lottery players abandon state lotto jackpot games when a multi-state game is available.
"In the US, if you offer people a multi-state game with a bigger payout, they don't bother with the local lottery."
A spokesman for Camelot said plans to develop the international lottery were going well, but added there are no plans to drop the national draw 'Over the last five years there has been an 8.5 percent (£391.8 million) increase in sales."This helped overall returns to Good Causes rise to more than £1.35 billion (US$2.38 billion), bringing the total raised by National Lottery players to over £21 billion."
The National Lottery will be contributing almost £2.2 billion (US$3.9 billion) towards the London 2012 Olympics, of which £750 million will come from specially designated lottery games.
So its all looking good for the new global lottery expected before the 2012 London olympic games.
