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> “We fully expected that they would laugh at us and say, ‘Well, no, of course you can’t do this,’” he said. But the company agreed it would at least sound out
by kubectl_h 2y ago
> “We fully expected that they would laugh at us and say, ‘Well, no, of course you can’t do this,’” he said. But the company agreed it would at least sound out the lottery agency.
> “We were very surprised that the answer was yes,” Potts added. “As a person and a lottery player, I cannot believe they said yes. I was shocked.”
Well Texas bills itself as the most business friendly state in the country. I'm not surprised that extends to some shadowy Maltese concern effectively purchasing the lottery jackpot at 25 cents on the dollar.
- AlexandrB 2y agoI don't get why you shouldn't be allowed to do this and it's not the first time it has happened either[1]. "Investors" in this kind of thing are still taking a small risk that they might have to share the winnings with another winning ticket. [1] http://investpost.org/mutual-funds/group-invests-5-million-to-hedge-bets-in-lottery/ http://investpost.org/mutual-funds/group-invests-5-million-t...
- bryanlarsen 2y agoIf normal lottery ticket buyers knew this sort of thing was going on, they'd likely stop buying tickets.
- byteknight 2y agoI mean the near-impossible odds weren't enough to dissuade them, I doubt some more statistics will do it.
- bryanlarsen 2y agoMany people care less about the odds and more about feeling that things are fair, that they are the same for everyone.
- bruce511 2y agoI know "fairness" is a virtue we teach to children, but honestly there is nothing fair about any part of life. Where you are born, what ethnicity you are, how rich your parents are, how healthy, athletic, brainy, beautiful you are, what you eat, how you live, nothing in any part of your life is "fair". So sure, play the lottery if you like, but don't pretend it's fair. Indeed the unfairness of the winning is entirely the point of it. Of course if you are playing the lottery and dreaming of a better life, you already know how unfair life really is.
- unethical_ban 2y agoIt is not an inevitability that a lottery system will be rigged to effectively guarantee a wealthy group gets the jackpot and profits.
- bruce511 2y agoI didn't say it was rigged, I said it wasn't fair.
- rufus_foreman 2y ago>> I know "fairness" is a virtue we teach to children, but honestly there is nothing fair about any part of life My parents did not teach me that fairness was a virtue. They taught me that "life's not fair". With the unspoken addendum of "deal with it". I guess I won the lottery in that respect.
- NooneAtAll3 2y agotickets are still same for everyone it's just that optimum stopped being "zero tickets bought" and instead shifted to "all tickets bought"
- gruez 2y agoHow is a company buying a bunch of tickets "unfair" when there's never a limit on how many tickets you can purchase? Is a compulsive gambler who buys 10 tickets also being "unfair" by buying 10 tickets?
- hinkley 2y agoWhen it stops being statistics they notice.
- byteknight 2y agoIt didn't stop. What are you referring to?
- hinkley 2y agoPay to win with 100% success rate.
- janfoeh 2y agoMostly you're not buying a chance to get rich, you buy yourself permission to dream about the "what if?" until the numbers are drawn.
- bryanlarsen 2y agoAnd you don't need to spend very much money to do that. For example, buying a ticket once per year is sufficient. You can still dream about the win you'll get the next time you buy a ticket. Group buys add a social context that has significant value too.
- sadeshmukh 2y agoGood on them.
- dalbasal 2y agoBingo. This is the literal answer to "why." Also bans on various casino hacks.
- toomuchtodo 2y agoLotteries. Retail crypto trading. Sports betting. Casinos. These are systems legitimized to vacuum up fiat from rubes. Your average human is unsophisticated as it relates to statistics, financial literacy, etc. They are simply different versions of alcohol and recreational drugs, hitting the same reward centers in the brain.
- lozenge 2y agoJust make the maximum jackpot payout $25.7 million per draw. Any remaining money in the jackpot remains for the next draws.
- autoexec 2y agoI don't think that it's very likely that many lottery ticket buyers would find out, or that they'd all stop even if they did. The Illinois state lottery is still selling tickets even though they've refused to pay winners https://www.illinoispolicy.org/illinois-sitting-on-upward-of-80-million-in-unpaid-lottery-winnings-attorney-says/ https://www.illinoispolicy.org/illinois-sitting-on-upward-of...
- onemoresoop 2y agoIt kindof beats the original purpose of lottery, chance.
- dist-epoch 2y agoBecause "normal" players will get upset, so it's bad for your business. The same thing happens in sports betting, where retail punters absolutely hate if someone places a bet online during a game exactly after a goal was scored, but before the odds move. So even sports betting exchanges like Betfair forbid this kind of arbitrage and void it. Not because they really care, but because it annoys the other players.
- LgWoodenBadger 2y agoWhile I don't understand what "retail punters" refers to, how does someone else's bet affect mine? I can't think of any scenario where I'd care once my bet was placed
- cool_dude85 2y agoThe risk here is that you buy your lotto ticket and hit, and have to split the jackpot you won playing the "right way" with an arb corporation. Also, not a risk as such, but it ensures that the jackpot will only ever reach a certain level.
- dist-epoch 2y agoRetail punters means casual bettors, non-professionals. They feel it's "unfair" to allow others to make 100% certain arbitrage bets.
- hn_throwaway_99 2y agoWell, I don't think it should be allowed because it basically defeats the purpose of a lottery, but, as Matt points out in his article, I think a better way to prevent it is to make it easier. If it becomes super easy to purchase millions of lottery tickets, then any arbitrageur would likely be dissuaded because the risk of someone else doing it (and having to share the winnings) go up by a ton. You could still have collusion, but that should be enforceable by laws against collusion I'd hope. It this case there were rules to prevent arbitrage that were basically just not enforced by the lottery commission, and that's really the only reason this was possible.
- patja 2y agoI'm curious what you define as the purpose of a state lottery. The Texas lottery's mission is to generate revenue for the state. Are you arguing this is counter to the purpose because the net revenue will be diminished by the certain expense of the payoff?
- Apofis 2y agoFor the same reason corporations shouldn't be purchasing Residential Real Estate (individual houses) it destroys the market for the consumers its intended to serve.
- gruez 2y agoWhat's the market that lotteries are supposed to "serve"? Taking money from poor people (lottery tickets are disproportionately bought by them) and giving them to the government, basically working out to an regressive tax?
- Apofis 2y agoIt's not really helping those poor people when those same lotteries are then bought by large corporations for profit.
- recursive 2y agoYou're right, but it's also not helping them either way. There was never any help to be had.
- throw16180339 2y agoPoor people bought tickets in the illegal numbers racket (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numbers_game https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numbers_game) before state lotteries existed.
- cess11 2y agoSpinola Gaming are hardly shadowy. Since a few years back they're owned by HeadsUp Entertainment, HDUP on whatever stock market. It's not surprising that a corporation specialised in producing B2B products for lottery and gambling corporations sussed out this opportunity, it's kind of their core competency to figure out such things and make them obvious to their customers in their offerings.