Lottery Fever

How much is enough to keep Californians interested in playing the state’s new lottery? That is like asking, how high is the sky? Or, where is the end of the rainbow?

For now, however, the California Lottery Commission has decided that the first big jackpots will be $2 million and $3 million per winner, with as many as 16 persons collecting at least $1 million in each sweepstakes period.

The commissioners apparently were concerned about creating too large a jackpot at the outset of the lottery this fall for fear that it would take too long to get a big winner. They took a cue from the new lottery in Oregon, where several weeks went by before the first multimillionaire was created. The jackpot had grown to $7.5 million by that time.

But there has been a different experience in Washington state, where the big Lotto game has been operating for a year. The lottery commission there is considering a toughening of the odds so that the jackpot would be awarded every third week instead of weekly, resulting in a much larger prize. This word came in a Seattle newspaper story under the Page 1 headline: “State Stirs Lottery Pot to Keep It Boiling.” While the lottery has done well from the state’s standpoint, director Mary Faulk said, “People can get bored very quickly.” If players become jaded about winning a mere million, tens of millions in prizes may rekindle their interest.

The Washington experience is similar to that in other states that have been operating lotteries for some years. Enthusiasm and ticket sales are keen at first, but drop off as the lottery loses its novelty. The inevitable reaction is to create bigger prizes, to add more games and gimmicks and to promote the lottery even heavier through advertising.

“The game right now is a success,” Washington’s Faulk said. “We’re just wondering if we can make it better.” A lottery is a lottery is a lottery. There really is no way to make it better, just bigger and more bizarre.

For the record, the odds of winning $2 million in California’s first game are 25 million to one. And the winner will not get a check for $2 million. The prize will be in payments over a 20-year period.

There was, however, one certain winner out of the recent California Lottery Commission meeting: the advertising firm that got a $15-million contract to promote the thing.