Better prizes for new EuroMillions lottery, but odds increase and so do ticket prices

EuroMillions jackpots always look amazing and when someone wins the big prize, they bag huge amounts of cash. The biggest ever win in the UK was £161,653,000 and that was from a EuroMillions jackpot.

So far there have been 62 EuroMillions winners in the UK, so if you don’t mind a flutter every now and then, it seems to make sense to put your luck to the test and buy a EuroMillions lottery ticket.

The odds are against you

Each ticket currently costs £2, so the costs of playing can quickly add up, although the odds of winning any prize in this lottery are one in 13 so you should win something, if not the big one, every once in a while.

The laws of probability suggest that at those odds you have to buy 13 tickets at £2 each costing a total of £26 to win any prize, no matter how large. Obviously, this is not guaranteed, however in the latest EuroMillions draw, the first prize level that came close to your £26 was for matching 3 plus two stars, yielding a £28.50 prize.

The odds of winning that combination is one in 11,771. Oops!

By the way, the current odds of winning the jackpot is one in 116,531,800. That is not promising!

But it’s fun to play and to imagine how your life will change if the Odds Gods did smile on you. After all, they do rain their cash onto someone every few weeks.

And that’s the point. We know the odds are against us, but let’s play (sensibly) anyway, which is why the lotteries are so successful.

EuroMillions is changing soon

The EuroMillions lottery is changing with the first new game played on Tuesday September 27th, with attractive new prizes:

• Twice as many £50M+ prizes each year
• Two guaranteed Millionaire makers in each draw (currently there is one)
• Mega Friday becoming Mega Week
• A new monthly bonus draw will be introduced

It sounds great, of course, but there is a sting in the tail.

1. The ticket price is rising to £2.50 (a 25 percent increase!)
2. The number of lucky stars to pick from rises from 2 out of 11 to 2 out of 12.

The facts that EuroMillions don’t want you to know

That increase in the number of lucky stars to select from looks a bit innocuous, but it isn’t. It is bighly significant because your odds of winning a jackpot now rise to one in 139,838,160.

To put that in perspective, that is approximately the same as the total populations of the UK and Germany combined!

The new game will add more than the population of Rumania to your chances of winning the jackpot. Hmmmm.

Your overall chances of winning any prize in the new game will remain at one in 13, which is good, but remember that you are paying 25% more for every ticket!

One in 116,000,000 chances of winning the Jackpot is bad enough so should we care that that rises to one in 140,000,000?

I guess that choice is entirely up to you.

Fortune favours the brave

There will be more winners with the new game and the top prizes will be huge, and very attractive, but personally I doubt that I will play.

It is becoming too expensive and the chances of winning significant prizes are becoming too remote.

I think that I will watch from the side lines and feel a degree of envy for those who do win all those millions.

I guess that these changes to the EuroMillions lottery are a step too far and I am not tempted to chance my arm with it.

What do think?

Do you think that the new Euromillions lottery is still worth a flutter, or do you agree with me that the odds are so stacked against you that you don’t want to be the one contributing to those huge prizes.

Afterall, the monies raised by lotteries do bring significant benefits, as demonstrated by the major successes of our athletes at the Olympic Games. Maybe you think that buying a ticket is doing good, even if you don’t win.

I’d be very interested to hear your thoughts, in the comments below.