Powerball tickets are no longer one dollar. They are now *TWO* dollars.
(Now, I enjoy a good daydream about winning the lottery as much as anybody, but I do not hold my daydreams in so high an esteem that I’m willing to double the price of having a good one.)
My prediction: The fact that the minimum jackpot will be $40 million will not be enough to overcome the price hike and we’ll see $1 powerball tickets again before October.
I don’t think so.
Consider: Almost nobody buys the dollar scratchers anymore, at least not where I work. it’s always the two dollar or more ones.
We might see the people who used to buy ten tickets only buy five in may cases, but if enough of them continue to buy ten it’ll probably cover the people for whom an extra dollar is to pricey.
A scratcher is not a lotto ticket. I’m with Jaybird on this one. I betcha $1 🙂
When it comes to the scratchers, at least in Colorado, the one dollar games are all of the form “get three like symbols” or “get two numbers that add up to another number”. They may as well be the tear-away lottery cards that they make available at Bingo Night at the Knights of Columbus.
The $5 ones pretend to be crossword puzzles or sudoku or the Broncos or something that makes you actually want to read the rules before you start scratching.
They seem to be doing it to help differentiate in the numerous states that now have both Powerball and MegaMillions – which costs $1.00 and resets at $12 million (the odds are also about 20% better IIRC). The highway signs and gas station displays will usually show the Powerball being 2-3 times bigger and thus worth the $2.00 price.
I’m not sold it’s gonna work, but we’ll see. I always thought the mega lottos would sell more tickets if they’d reset at higher amounts, but I’d have suggested they skim those off sales when the jackpot is already big (ie once it’s $100 million divert 25% or so of the sales to the next jackpot so it starts at $30 or $40 million). I don’t think raising prices will work as well.
Given the $40 million reset point, I suspect that they’re thinking that they’re leapfrogging over the most fallow period of the lottery (it wouldn’t surprise me to find that sales jump 33% or so at some number in the mid-8-digits).
I’m with Jaybird on this one. I will spend a dollar for a what to do when we win daydream with the wife, but I doubt I will spend as much now that the daydream cost two dollars.
A question: Where is the home for the blog? The times listed are really weird or home base is somewhere near Reykjavik.
Where is the home for the blog?
I have no idea! I pretend that it’s Prince Edward Island.
On the internet, nobody knows you’re Anne of Green Gables.
Here are some of the big differences.
The Powerball number is now 1-35 instead of 1-39.
The Powerplay used to be a multiplier of 2-5. Now the multiplier is 2 for all except the 4 + PB (4X) and the lowest amount (3X)
If they had just changed the odds, I’d stick with it. As it is, I’m going to move the “big lotto” portion of what I spend over to Mega Millions.