New Lotto Game Aims at Super Jackpots

California Lottery officials, hoping to boost flagging revenues, will introduce a new Lotto game on June 21 designed to produce more super jackpots by lengthening the odds of winning.

Joanne McNabb, communications manager for the lottery, said Thursday that the agency’s latest projections show that this year’s revenues from Lotto, the most popular game of chance sponsored by the state, will be $100 million less than last year.

She said officials expect, however, that other games, including the newly introduced Decco and the older scratch-off tickets, will supply enough revenue to make up for the decline in Lotto earnings so that schools will collect about the same amount from the lottery this year as last--about $1 billion. State law requires that a minimum of 34% of lottery revenues go to public schools.

To reignite interest in Lotto with bigger jackpots, the lottery plans to add four numbers to the field that players select on the Lotto tickets. Players will pick six numbers from a field of 53 instead of the present 49.

The extra numbers will increase the odds of winning the jackpot on a single ticket from one in 14 million to one in nearly 23 million. Put another way, the chances of dying in the crash of a small plane are four times greater than the chance of winning the new Lotto game with the purchase of a single ticket.

The California Lottery Commission approved the changes in the Lotto game last August with the understanding that they would probably take effect in April. But McNabb said problems in obtaining new computer software forced a delay until June 21.

She attributed the decline in Lotto revenues to a dearth in super jackpots between September, 1989, and this past January. In that time, she said, there were none of the big jackpots--$30 million and up--that fan Lotto fever.

“What people like about Lotto is the excitement of the jackpot building,” she said. “When that doesn’t occur, playership goes down. The standard thing that all lotteries do is to expand the field so the likelihood of having big jackpots is greater.”

The jackpots increase when there are no winners and the prize money is “rolled over” to the next drawing. In recent years, California has not had many large jackpots because the number of people playing has been so great that the winning combination is usually selected.

“Timing is the thing that works for Lotto,” McNabb said. “Lotto sales are jackpot-driven,” she said. “We need frequent big jackpots at nice intervals.”

But I. Nelson Rose, a Whittier College law professor who often acts as a consultant to the legal gambling industry, said that while the change in the Lotto game is a smart marketing move, it is unfair to the most frequent players.

He said the strategy behind the change is to encourage people to play who otherwise might not.

“What they’re trying to do is expand their market base,” Rose said.

“They are antagonizing their regular players who, of course, don’t want higher odds, but they figure those people are going to play anyway. By creating super jackpots, they know they are going to keep their regular customers and get new customers.”

He said the lottery by nature is a fickle industry because consumers will buy for awhile and then lose interest. He said officials are under constant pressure to put new wrinkles into the games to renew interest.

Indeed, as part of its marketing efforts, the lottery will introduce a new game called Topper at the same time it changes the Lotto field. To play Topper, consumers must first purchase a Lotto ticket. For an additional dollar, the computer will automatically pick three California cities from a list of 100.

At the twice-weekly Lotto drawings, officials will also draw for Topper. A player holding all three cities drawn wins $25,000.