A Lottery Is A Lottery Or Is It?

You see it whenever you fill up your gas tank, the constant nagging reminder of how much the current state lottery is sitting at. Millions upon millions of dollars sitting, waiting for you to buy a ticket, waiting for you to fulfill your destiny by selecting the \”winning\” lottery tickets. This made me wonder about the secret life of a lottery ticket. How does our lottery in the states compare with how lotteries are played elsewhere in the world? I dove in to find out.

What I have found most people around the world, albeit state, national or even the UK lottery, is that most players have a system to select the numbers that are going to win them the latest jackpot. When purchasing their lottery tickets most people will use birthdays, anniversaries, dates that (in their mind) are those that their lucky star will select for them, and only them, to have the proverbial \”Golden Ticket\”. Here in the US, for example, there has been a surge of selections of the same grouping of numbers, found in the popular television show LOST 4, 8, 15, 16, 23, and 42. If these are the numbers that are selected, I would hate to see the mass panic that would ensue having to split the winnings 18 million ways. For all of my research, I wasn’t able to find the same type of pattern in number selection in the UK, however, there are many differences as to how their national lottery is played as compared to our state lotteries.

The largest difference that I can find between the American lottery system and that of the National Lottery found in the UK is that within the UK you can select your numbers online and play online daily. This is a far cry from what we have in the US today where you have to patronize your local convenience, grocery, or liquor store to invest your earnings in what will certainly be the last lottery ticket you will ever need to purchase. In the UK, not only can you track the numbers you have played in the past online, you can select those numbers over and over again, to play daily, and see if you can win big. You have a capability of simply imputing your numbers in a box on the National Lottery website to see how they compare with the UK lotto results. It appears as if the Europeans are decades ahead in their lottery ticket purchase, selection and tracking process.

Why hasn’t America leaped forward in our lottery selection process? I really don’t know. It seems that the lottery in America is still frowned upon by many as the evils of gambling, which means it’s restricted to the back alleys and dark corners of back alley poker games in many states in the Union. However, what some of these anti-lotto advocates might overlook is how the lottery can revitalize the economy in certain states, and that lifting the state veil of rules on how and when to play can actually benefit the economy in some ways.

The Euroas ability to out perform the American dollar at this difficult time in history is not solely due to its relaxed attitudes on gambling. Yet, imagine the good that could come from an American National Lottery, easily accessible online, where even pennies on the dollar could be directed at the public good. We could increase support for healthcare, education and the arts. We might even be able to pay down the national debt!

For the anti gambling advocates a national lottery in the US could even consist of spending limits placed on the website, and in this way the cries of \”It will get out of control\” could subside. It is possible that we could implement a similar system as our sister country across the pond and use it for many different venues.

America could have a National Lottery website that is governed by its citizens. Millions could become available by giving just pennies per ticket to causes we all support. This could be done without altering what individual states do with their lotteries.

What does this mean to you and I? Well it means that gone are the days in Europe where you have a wadded up lottery ticket in a pair of jeans or shoved in the bottom of a purse…the ticket that could very well be the winning one, accidentally thrown away or covered in spilled coffee. It means that claiming your winnings could be as simple as one mouse click away. This is the future of the lottery, and so ends, the secret life of lottery tickets with the revolution of online gaming.

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