{"id":4835,"date":"2012-01-06T12:10:37","date_gmt":"2012-01-06T17:10:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/new-hampshire\/?p=4835"},"modified":"2012-01-06T12:11:23","modified_gmt":"2012-01-06T17:11:23","slug":"why-it-doesnt-really-matter-that-powerball-prices-are-going-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/new-hampshire\/2012\/01\/06\/why-it-doesnt-really-matter-that-powerball-prices-are-going-up\/","title":{"rendered":"Why It Doesn&#8217;t Really Matter That Powerball Prices Are Doubling"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_4852\"  class=\"wp-caption module image left\" style=\"max-width: 300px;\"><a class=\"fancybox\" title=\"It will soon be more expensive to play Powerball, but the prizes will also be better\" href=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/new-hampshire\/files\/2012\/01\/4711709883_b714362e8a.jpg\" rel=\"\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-4852\" title=\"Powerball FTW!\" src=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/new-hampshire\/files\/2012\/01\/4711709883_b714362e8a-300x225.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\" srcset=\"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/new-hampshire\/files\/2012\/01\/4711709883_b714362e8a-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/new-hampshire\/files\/2012\/01\/4711709883_b714362e8a-220x165.jpg 220w, https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/new-hampshire\/files\/2012\/01\/4711709883_b714362e8a-138x103.jpg 138w, https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/new-hampshire\/files\/2012\/01\/4711709883_b714362e8a.jpg 500w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><p class=\"wp-media-credit\">Todd Sanders \/ Flickr<\/p><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">It will soon be more expensive to play Powerball, but the prizes will also be better<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Between bouts of checking out Republican primary-related economic news, we&#8217;ve stumbled on an interesting bit of information about the New Hampshire Lottery <a title=\"Lottery touts better odds of $2 Powerball tickets\" href=\"http:\/\/unionleader.com\/article\/20120104\/NEWS02\/701059952\" target=\"_blank\">courtesy of reporter Denis Paiste at the <em>Union-Leader<\/em><\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;Two dollar Powerball tickets will mean more prizes and more million-dollar winners, New Hampshire Lottery Executive Director Charles R. McIntyre said Wednesday.<\/p>\n<p>The last drawing for $1 Powerball tickets will be Saturday, Jan. 14; the $2 tickets will go on sale Jan. 15.<\/p>\n<p>&#8216;It&#8217;ll be easier to win, the odds are lower, there will be more $1 million winners throughout the country and hopefully in New Hampshire,&#8217; he said.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Jackpots will start at $40 million. Second prize will jump from $200,000 to $1 million.<\/p>\n<p>The Power Play option will remain $1 pushing the cost of Powerball with Power Play from $2 to $3.<\/p>\n<p>McIntyre said he expects the lottery will sell fewer individual tickets, but revenues will nevertheless increase. &#8216;That&#8217;s the reason we did it,&#8217; he said.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><div class=\"related-content alignright\"><h4 class=\"related-header\">Related<\/h4><div class=\"links\"><h5>Posts<\/h5><ul><li class=\"link\"><a href=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/new-hampshire\/2011\/11\/16\/losing-the-lotto-how-a-massachusetts-gas-station-is-eating-into-nhs-education-funding\/\">Losing The Lotto: How A Massachusetts Gas Station Is Eating Into NH\u2019s Education Funding<\/a><\/li><li class=\"link\"><a href=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/new-hampshire\/2011\/12\/07\/losing-the-lotto-how-much-would-having-keno-really-help-nhs-revenues\/\">Losing The Lotto:  How Much Would Having Keno Help NH\u2019s Revenues?<\/a><\/li><li class=\"link\"><a href=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/new-hampshire\/2011\/12\/06\/losing-the-lotto-comparing-nhs-lotto-prizes-to-massachusetts\/\">Losing The Lotto: Comparing NH\u2019s Lotto Prizes To Massachusetts<\/a><\/li><li class=\"link\"><a href=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/new-hampshire\/2011\/10\/25\/losing-the-lotto-where-the-revenue-comes-from\/\">Losing The Lotto:  Where The Revenue Comes\u00a0From<\/a><\/li><\/ul><\/div><div class=\"topics\"><h5>Topics<\/h5><p class=\"topic\"><img class=\"alignleft\" src=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/new-hampshire\/files\/2011\/10\/NH-Powerball-60x60.jpg\" height=\"60\" width=\"60\" \/><a href=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/new-hampshire\/topic\/lottery\/\">What You Need To Know About The NH State Lottery<\/a><\/p><\/div><\/div>But Powerball revenues are tricky to predict.\u00a0 That&#8217;s because there&#8217;s a relatively small group of hardcore players who purchase tickets every week.\u00a0 As the jackpots increase, more and more people decide to buy tickets.\u00a0 But since winning the jackpot is based on random chance, whether you have a huge grand prize&#8211;and stellar Powerball revenues&#8211;is also a function of chance.\u00a0 McIntyre once explained it to StateImpact this way:<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Scratch tickets is really where you can have the most impact, and where you should concentrate, because 70 percent of what we sell is scratch tickets&#8230;We can\u2019t control what the jackpot for Powerball is, because by definition, it\u2019s a random event.\u00a0 It\u2019s how many folks buy, and did somebody win?\u00a0 And if somebody wins, we go back to starting again [in terms of revenues].\u00a0 But scratch tickets you can affect.\u00a0 You can make them change.\u00a0 You can make them look better.\u00a0 You can make them act better&#8230;And prize structure\u2019s an important part of that.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>As we&#8217;ve <a title=\"Losing The Lotto: Where The Revenue Comes From\" href=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/new-hampshire\/2011\/10\/25\/losing-the-lotto-where-the-revenue-comes-from\/\" target=\"_blank\">previously reported<\/a>, Powerball&#8217;s historically been a distant second in popularity to instant tickets.\u00a0 That&#8217;s mainly because scratch tickets, with their smaller prizes and greater odds of winning, have a much larger base of devotees.\u00a0 According to figures provided to StateImpact by the <a title=\"New Hampshire Lottery: 2011 Annual Report\" href=\"http:\/\/www.nhlottery.com\/pv_obj_cache\/pv_obj_id_18DB822E1251925270D7F161E09D7C8075243300\/filename\/2011annualreport.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">New Hampshire Lottery Commission<\/a>, Powerball sales only accounted for $26.5 million in FY 2011.\u00a0 That&#8217;s compared to $161 million in instant ticket sales.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Between bouts of checking out Republican primary-related economic news, we&#8217;ve stumbled on an interesting bit of information about the New Hampshire Lottery courtesy of reporter Denis Paiste at the Union-Leader: &#8220;Two dollar Powerball tickets will mean more prizes and more million-dollar winners, New Hampshire Lottery Executive Director Charles R. McIntyre said Wednesday. The last drawing [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":28,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[51],"tags":[192],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/new-hampshire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4835"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/new-hampshire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/new-hampshire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/new-hampshire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/28"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/new-hampshire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4835"}],"version-history":[{"count":22,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/new-hampshire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4835\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4858,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/new-hampshire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4835\/revisions\/4858"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/new-hampshire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4835"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/new-hampshire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4835"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/new-hampshire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4835"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}