> You mean the expected payout is -$5, right? No, 5$. The reason is that you sell/auction these lottery tickets. The price that the customer pays has to be sub

> You mean the expected payout is -$5, right? No, 5$. The reason is that you sell/auction these lottery tickets. The price that the customer pays has to be subtracted from this payout (and this way the final payout very likely will become negative). But the price that the customer will pay in this experiment is not known beforehand, so the initial payout has to be positive.