Fixing the National Lottery

No, not the draw, the payout system that is badly broken. In the last draw, people who got 3 numbers received £25. Those who got 5 received £15. In total. Not surprisingly there have been a lot of complaints. Camelot are saying they can do nothing about it, which is not true, but they would have to make a change to their payment system.
At the moment, payment is made by tiers, with amounts at each tier shared between those on that tier only. If there are too many winners on a small tier they get a very low payout.

How could Camelot fix this?

Basic maths.

You change the payout system to make it cumulative:
All users who get 3 numbers or more get £25.
All users who get 4 numbers or more get an additional share of the four number tier
All users who get 5 numbers or more get an additional share of the five number tier
All users who get 5 numbers & bonus more get an additional share of the bonus tier
All users who get 6 numbers get an additional share of the jackpot

So with the lottery last week:

Prize fund of £31,543,974 1,065,158 winners

Prize fund per tier:	Numbers:	Paid to:	Total Paid:	Remaining Fund:	Each Winner Get:
£25	3	126,199	£3,154,975	£28,388,999	£25
£33.5	4	11,967	£401,829	£27,987,170	£58.5
£14.97	5	4,088	£61,230	£27,925,940	£73.47
£10,016	5+	6	£60,096	£27,865,844	£10,089.47
	6	no winners

This wouldn’t even reduce the overall prize fund to carry forward by much. It would make sure that a result like last Wednesday’s never happens again. What it can’t solve is the size of the tier allocations which are rather small, and the extra ten balls that reduce the winning odds to levels that are near daft.

But it would be a start.

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This blog has now moved to http://www.rablogs.co.uk/tirial, where the original article can be found.  Fixing the National Lottery - http://rablogs.co.uk/tirial/2016/03/25/fixing-the-national-lottery/ was published on March 25, 2016 at 8:09 pm.