|
The Euromillions draw held on Friday 17 November
was a particularly memorable one because it
failed to produce a single jackpot winner for
the twelfth week in a row. Under Euromillions
rules, the £120 million jackpot fund could
not be rolled over to a thirteenth draw and
therefore had to be distributed to winners of
the second tier prize (achieved by matching
five main numbers and one of two Lucky Star
numbers). There were 20 such second tier prize
winners, and this meant that they each collected
a cool £6.7 million - not bad at all for
second prize!
The lack of a top prize winner meant that anyone
who had summoned up the courage (and the wealth)
to buy every possible combination of numbers
would have actually won the whole jackpot prize
fund. This would have required the purchase
of 76,275,360 tickets at a cost of £1.50
each, for a total outlay of £114,413,040.
Assuming a win of £120,000,000, the brave
player would have made a profit of £5,586,960,
a figure which represents a 4.88% return on
their investment. Find a bank or building society
that would pay that amount for such a short
space of time and we'd love to hear from you!
Of course, there would have been downsides
to buying every possible combination besides
the cost involved. First, if the jackpot had
been won by even on other person, the venture
would have created an enormous loss for the
investor. Winning just £60,000,000 instead
of £120,000,000 would have meant losing
£54,413,040, or 47.55% of the total outlay.
More than one other winner would have cost the
speculator an even greater amount.
And then consider the logistics of buying 76,275,360
tickets in the first place. If our hypothetical
investor had set aside six full days to buy
the required tickets, and they were somehow
able to function 24 hours a day without a break,
they would have needed to buy 529,690 tickets
an hour! That's 8,812 tickets per minute or
147 tickets per second. When you look at the
problem from this perspective it seems even
more intimidating than being able to raise the
required £114,413,040 in the first place.
Predictably, no individual bought every possible
ticket and so, as we said earlier, the jackpot
rolled down to the 20 second tier winners. 7
of these were from the UK, 4 from France, 3
from Spain, 3 from Portugal, 2 from Ireland
and 1 from Belgium.
20 November 2006
Back to news summary
• News archive
|
