Doesn’t $20 Million Sound Good To You?

With Mary on vacation this week, I have the great opportunity to speak to our lottery players through the blog.  I told Mary that would take this opportunity to discuss one of the issues that continually challenges me as vice president of marketing at the Iowa Lottery – why don’t people think Powerball is ALWAYS big?

I don’t know about you, but I think I could put an extra $20 million to good use. Or even an extra $200,000.

Isn’t $1 worth a chance to dream about winning at least $20 million?  Apparently, there are many people who don’t think $20 million is worth the buck.  Sales of Powerball are always much lower at smaller jackpot levels compared to jackpot levels of $100 million-plus.  For example, during the recent week ending May 23 when we had a $222 million Powerball jackpot, sales were $1.9 million.  However, during the same week last year with a high jackpot of $20 million, sales were just over $900,000.

I’ve never quite been able to understand why this dynamic in lottery spending exists. Certainly you could come up with some great things to do with $222 million in cash, but couldn’t you do some of the same things with $20 million?  Maybe it’s just me, but $20 million still seems like a nice sum to win.  I think it would be nice just to win $200,000 playing Powerball! 

When you play Powerball, it’s always big.  So, get out and buy yourself a ticket prior to tonight’s drawing – a handsome sum of $25 million is on the line!  It’s just a dollar.

Comments

[Mike Byrne]

You can talk about how good $20,000,000 is until you are blue in the face.The facts are that you will have to wait nearly 30 years to collect the $20,000,000 and then you will be taxed out of 30% of it (if not more now that the democrats are running the country).If you take the cash option you will NOT claim the advertised $20,000,000,you will only collect $10,000,000 minus $3,000,000 in taxes.So you will end up with only $7,000,000 after taxes.I don't call that winning $20,000,000,do you?