The biggest gambling wins in the world happen in two ways: massive progressive jackpot wins or national lotteries (lotto’s). Most countries, even those that don’t allow casinos or online gambling, have a national lottery, a game where the nation can place a bet on what numbers will be drawn during a lottery and see if they can score that big, fat lotto cheque.
But the CasinoPlay crew have noticed a lot of online casinos are also offering opportunities to play the lotto – and we wanted to know why. Surely, a game of chance that is as easy to enter as popping into your nearest convenience store and buying a ticket doesn’t need or warrant an online casino?
What we discovered is certainly very interesting – especially for gamblers.
The definition of lotto is:
While bingo, whether it’s the children’s version or the casino version, is a great game, we are more interested in the lottery aspect. A lottery is a means of raising money by selling numbered tickets and giving prizes to the holders of numbers drawn at random. Importantly, lottery also refers to a situation where success is governed by chance.
The word lottery comes from the practice of drawing lots or groups of numbers to identify winners. The word ‘lotto’ itself is just a popular and fun shortening of the word lottery.
National Lotteries are usually government-run lotteries that raise money for charities or projects that are supported by that government. In South Africa, for instance, the funds raised by our National Lotteries are often used for social development or sports programmes or other projects that may fall outside of normal government budgets.
Lotto’s have some of the biggest jackpots in history. The US Powerball holds the ultimate record at US$1.586 BILLION split between three winners. The EuroMillions lotto paid out €185 MILLION to one lucky winner in Scotland. The biggest payout from the South African National Lottery was R232,131,750.69 (because those cents are important!) won by one man in 2019.
So, you can see why lotteries are one of the biggest gambling games on the planet.
As mentioned earlier, buying a lottery ticket is as easy as being over-18 and walking into a convenience store. Most National Lotteries can even be played from your mobile phone or your bank account. So why go to an online casino?
Well, this is where it gets really interesting.
National Lotteries are usually only open to citizens of a particular country or territory and you must buy your tickets in that country or territory.
What online casinos do is allow players to buy into any lottery, anywhere in the world.
How? In two very interesting ways.
You choose the numbers online at the casino. The casino then send representatives in that country to physically buy the tickets with your chosen numbers for your chosen lottery.
This is becoming more and more popular at online casinos. Rather than actually buying tickets, the casino allows you to place a bet on what numbers you think will be the winning numbers in a lottery. This means that, if you predict the correct numbers, you win the posted jackpot amount.
This is very important to understand – the amount you win may not be the same amount as that offered by the actual lottery. For example, the EuroMillions jackpot sits at €10,000,000. You go to your preferred online casino for South African players and buy a lottery ticket. Your numbers match the EuroMillions jackpot but you only get the equivalent of €5,000,000.
On the other hand, the EuroMillions jackpot could be 10,000,000 but you are playing to win €20,000,000.
Because the casino is allowing you to bet on the outcome of a lottery, rather than the actual lottery itself, it can set any jackpot amount it wants. You are not playing for the lottery jackpot; you’re just using the lottery numbers to predict a winning sequence and bet on it.
If your online gambling partner is offering fixed-odds betting, then the chances are they are offering pretty much every major lotto you can think of. And some you may not even know exist.
What you do need to keep in mind though is that you are gambling on a predicted number sequence, not the actual formal lottery itself so make sure you are playing at a licensed and registered online casino or lottery provider!
Lotteries were the first ever progressive jackpots. The more people play, the more money goes into the kitty, the bigger the jackpot, the more people play.
Just like a progressive jackpot slot machine.
The difference is that national lotteries have millions of people playing and feeding the total.
There is a very noticeable slack off on lottery ticket purchases after a big jackpot win as people wait for the base total to build up again. Once that number starts looking very tasty, the ticket sales start jumping – as does the jackpot.
Progressive jackpot slot machines tend to stay stable throughout the gambling period because the base amount is usually quite high on the more popular games like Mega Moolah and Mega Fortune. Also, slot machines pay out less frequently than some lotto’s because the lotto has a specific rollover period after which the prize must be awarded (usually split between players who may have missed just one number).
Actually – yes. Some casinos and game providers have developed different forms of lotto games for the online or land-based environments. These can be as simple as bingo-type games (which, after all, are descendants of the very first national lottery – Il Gioco del Lotto d’Italia or the Italian lottery from around 1530) or as innovative, tailored slots games that use the lottery format to create unique experiences.
For the non-South Africans out there, this means: TAKE A CHANCE!
Add something a little different to your usual gambling and casino games and see if you can crack one of the big international lotteries. And if you do, remember to send a little luck our way!
