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MONEY COMMENT
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Camelot, the operator of the National Lottery, launched what is now known as the Lotto in November 1994. For several years afterwards, it enjoyed rising ticket sales (and income) as Britain went lottery-mad and we spent as much as £5 billion a year chasing the little coloured balls and scratching silver panels off little cards. However, in recent years, Camelot has been struggling to curb falling ticket sales, launching a midweek draw in February 1997 in an attempt to stop the rot. Falling ticket sales pleases me greatly, because the Lotto is a truly awful gamble! Camelot's latest idea to entice jaded punters is the EuroMillions draw, the first of which was launched last Friday, with every draw being televised live each Friday on Sky One. EuroMillions tickets cost two euros each (around £1.50 at current exchange rates) and give punters in the UK, France and Spain a slim chance of winning a huge jackpot. With rollovers, the big prize could hit £50 million or more, but Camelot expects the average jackpot to be around £15m. Here's how it works: you choose five numbers from a main board of fifty, plus two of nine yellow Lucky Star numbers. If all seven of your numbers are drawn, you win the jackpot, which you may well have to share with other winners. There are twelve prize levels and you win something for matching three or more numbers. However, the overall odds of winning any prize are 1 in 24, so 23 out of 24 tickets will end up in the bin. However, your chance of winning The Big One is 1 in (50 x 49 x 48 x 47 x 46 x 9 x 8) / (5 x 4 x 3 x 2 x 2) = an unbelievable 1 in 76,275,360! You're almost 5½ times more likely to win the normal Lotto (which is an incredibly poor gamble in itself) than you are to scoop the EuroMillions jackpot! Frankly, with odds like these, the EuroMillions jackpot is nothing more than a pipe dream. You're more likely to die within a day of buying your ticket than you are to win the star prize. Give the EuroMillions draw a wide berth - this one's only for mugs. Anyway, sudden wealth isn't a guaranteed recipe for happiness, as this article shows! (By the way, a French player won the first mega-draw, collecting €15m for picking 16, 29, 32, 36 and 41, plus Lucky Star numbers 7 and 9.) More: Five Ways To Become A Millionaire | Fake Lottery Scams.