World Lottery is a term that describes the concept of a lottery which spans a large number of countries and is played by many millions of players around the globe. There are already some massive lotteries in the world, most notably Euromillions, which was launched in 2004 and is played in nine countries, namely: Austria, Belgium, France, Ireland, Luxembourg, Portugal, Spain, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. In this lottery the jackpot starts at €15 million, but much larger jackpots have been available thanks to multiple rollovers. At the time of writing, the biggest Euromillions jackpot on record was worth €183 million, and this was shared between three lucky winners in February 2006.

A world lottery would be even larger than the already massive Euromillions game. UK National Lottery operator and Euromillions co-founder Camelot have unveiled plans to create what they call the “World Lottery Draw”. The vision is for this to be played in scores of countries, including those in the Americas, Australasia and Europe, and for the world lottery to create up to 100 brand new millionaires in every draw. Initial plans also indicate that they could be an annual superdraw that makes it possible to win even more.

Planning the launch of a major lottery takes time. The idea for Euromillions was conceived more than a decade before it became a reality, so when a World Lottery will make its appearance is still a matter of speculation. That said, lottery operators across the world are taking the idea very seriously. So much so that in November 2006 a group of potential World Lottery partners met a World Lottery Association Conference in Singapore.

Further meetings will no doubt take place as the World Lottery progresses from being a plan to being introduced as a playable reality. When the World Lottery is eventually launched, lottery enthusiasts all over the globe will have millions of reasons to be cheerful. Until then, we are fortunate to have a wide variety of state and national lotteries to be going on with, along with what can be viewed as the “scaled-down template” of the World Lottery, which is of course the multi-nation Euromillions game.