The latest gamble by one of the country’s most successful, but aging, state lotteries is to use lifetime payouts to attract a new breed of bettors. While the Lottery has had select games that have had lifetime grand prizes, the newest approach is a family of instant tickets ranging from $1 to $10 paying off with up to $5,000 a week for life.
The big daddy of this new family is an all-New England game that promises $1,000 a day for the rest of your life. “It’s a concept that really resonates in the market,” says Lottery spokeswoman Beth Bresnahan.
The first drawing in the New England game, on March 15, produced a winner from Hanover. Paul Sternburg, the executive director of the Lottery, says ticket sales were brisk but not necessarily big enough to cover 39-year-old Bruce Campbell, who could conceivably collect daily payments for 40 years or more. Sternburg says research indicates sales over time will more than cover those weeks where sales lag in the week where there is a winner.
And because the jackpot never escalates, the extra money from those weeks when there is no winner will be divided among the states based on percentage of sales.An annuity is purchased to cover the lifetime payouts and the size of the annuity is drawn from actuarial tables based on the winner’s age. According to Sternburg, the average age of a lifetime lottery winner is 49.
Live long and prosper.
