Business & Tech

Mega Millions Prize is Enticing but are Players 'Suckers'?

An AOL Daily Finance report says a recent Bloomberg report gives Georgia the "biggest sucker prize".

According to an AOL Daily Finance report, getting rich from winning the lottery is statistically impossible. 

The same report says a recent report out of Bloomberg declares residents of Georgia some of "the biggest suckers" in America. 

Collectively, Peach State residents spent $3.4 billion on lottery tickets over the past year — an average of $470.73 per adult, which amounted to a full 1 percent of their annual income, ensuring the state a high ranking on Bloomberg's "sucker index".

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But it was its low rate of winning lottery payouts — 62.9 percent — that really pushed Georgia over the top and won it the biggest-sucker prize, the reports says. 

According to the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, of the 43 states that run lotteries, the average payout is just under 60 percent of the revenue dollars collected. 

That's an important number, according to the report, because rankings aside, whenever you're talking lotteries, true "winners" are few and far between. 

According to Bloomberg's study, state-run lotteries "have the worst odds of any form of legal gambling" in America. They're so bad that when you play the lottery in Louisiana, over time you're going to average $0.51 in "winnings" for every dollar you pay to play. The best odds in the nation can be found in Massachusetts, but even up there you're looking at a $0.72 payback on each $1 lottery ticket. And the average payout is just $0.60.

The report compares the odds of taking home a big lottery jackpot to the odds of some other activities:

  • Getting pregnant from a one-night stand: 1 in 20
  • Getting struck by lightning: 1 in 10,000
  • Dying in an airplane crash: 1 in 355,318
  • Being dealt a royal flush in a given hand of poker: 1 in 655,750
  • Dying from a flesh-eating bacteria: 1 in 1 million
  • Winning the California Super Lotto Jackpot: 1 in 18 million

Have you already gotten your Mega Millions ticket or multiple tickets? If so, what would you do with the winnings? If not, do you plan to play? Tell us in comments below. 

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