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FAIRFIELD COUNTY, Conn. Powerball officials are betting that bigger jackpots will attract more players as they double the price of tickets in the multistate lottery game to $2 beginning Jan 15, the Associated Press is reporting on TheDay.com.
Although the odds of winning a giant jackpot are also improving, the lottery is gambling that people are willing to pay more for the chance of becoming a millionaire in a down economy.
In November, a trio of Greenwich financial executives won $254.2 million in the states largest Powerball win ever. Brandon Lacoff, Greg Skidmore and Timothy Davidson all work for Belpointe, a financial management firm. The three are trustees of the Putnam Avenue Family Trust, which was created to handle their winnings. After taxes, the men took home nearly $104 million.
Lottery officials believe increasing the price of the game will make it more popular, said Terry Rich, spokesman for the Multistate Lottery Association, which runs Powerball. "People like variety," Rich said. "We're repackaging and freshening up the product."
Odds of winning will improve because the number of Power Ball numbers to choose from will decrease from 39 to 35. That will raise the odds of winning from 1 in 192 million to 1 in 175 million.
Also, the starting jackpot is rising from $20 million to $40 million. The amount won for matching all five numbers but not the Power Ball will increase from $200,000 to $1 million.
The move is a strategy to differentiate the game from Mega Millions, the other big money, multistate lottery game that is sold for $1 a ticket. Both games are sold in 42 states, including Connecticut, plus the U.S. Virgin Islands and Washington, D.C. Each game has drawings twice a week.
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