Highly improbable

ON A cool and clear spring Friday night, in the basement of an anodyne office building in the Paris suburb of Boulogne-Billancourt, about a dozen people took their places to go through the weekly ritual of making one European rich beyond his wildest dreams. Tumblers were spun, numbered balls drawn, pearly white teeth flashed, breaths held—but in the end there was no winner in that week's EuroMillions draw. The €79m ($100m) jackpot was rolled over to the following week, when the prize went up to just over €100m ($125m) and the draw produced a single winner, from Britain. It was the biggest lottery windfall in British history, though still nowhere near the world record, a stunning $390m split between two tickets in an American Mega Millions draw.

EuroMillions is run jointly by the Française des Jeux, Loterías y Apuestas del Estado and Camelot, which operate the French, Spanish and British lotteries respectively. It is open to players in Britain, Ireland, France, Spain, Luxembourg, Austria, Belgium, Portugal and Switzerland; measured by the number of players, it is the world's biggest lottery. During the week of the missed draw last spring some 26m Europeans bought tickets. The draw takes place in Paris every Friday night between 9pm and 10pm; it is recorded and sent to the participating countries, which work the footage into their own presentations. The prizes are tax-free and handed over at once and in full, whereas in America the prizes are taxed and the winners are generally given the option of receiving the full amount in yearly instalments or a portion of it as an immediate lump sum.

Like most modern lotteries, EuroMillions funds good causes of many kinds. But that is not what gets people excited. What the lottery sells, according to Christophe Blanchard-Dignac, the head of Française des Jeux, is a dream. That dream is of great personal wealth, even if the lottery is perhaps the only game in the world in which your chances of winning are not greatly increased by playing because the odds are so long.

Enduring allure

And yet lotteries have been perhaps the most enduring form of gambling. Slot machines are an outgrowth of the Industrial Revolution; card and dice games go in and out of fashion (who now bets on Hazard or Faro, popular in the 18th and 19th centuries?); the patterns and subjects of sports betting vary widely between countries and cultures; but the idea of taking a small flutter on a chance of immense riches holds almost universal appeal.

Historically, large-scale lotteries have served two purposes: encouraging commerce in cash-poor societies and contributing to civic welfare. In 1522 a Venetian dealer offered punters the chance to win carpets in a draw for a small entry fee. Two centuries later lotteries in colonial America provided a mechanism for selling indivisible, expensive pieces of property. Thomas Jefferson approved of this method “where many run small risks for the chance of obtaining a high prize”.

Proceeds from lotteries helped to fund repairs to the Cinque Ports on the Sussex and Kent coasts, and to build Westminster Bridge. They also generated finance for such notable American institutions as Columbia and Yale universities and Williams and Dartmouth colleges. George Washington called gambling “the child of avarice, the brother of iniquity and the father of mischief”, but Benjamin Franklin organised a lottery in Philadelphia in 1746.

The modern French lottery began in 1933 to help people who had been widowed, orphaned or injured in the first world war. Today Française des Jeux finances French sports; its contributions accounted for more than 80% of the budget of the Centre National de Développement du Sport in 2009. In Britain, where more than 70% of the adult population play regularly, Camelot has distributed more than £24 billion to good causes since its first lottery draw in 1994, including sport, arts, heritage and education.

Education is also a main recipient of American lottery largesse. California's lottery has been giving 34 cents in every dollar to public schools since 1984. Arkansas started its lottery in 2009 with the express aim of funding scholarships for the state's students and universities. And in Georgia lotteries have provided over 1m residents with scholarships to go to college.

The respectable face of gambling

This tradition of civic support may be one reason why lotteries are more widely accepted, and therefore more accessible, than other forms of gambling. The World Lottery Association has members from over 90 countries. Most American states have lotteries, and even in some of those that do not, residents can still buy tickets in the two multistate lotteries, PowerBall and Mega Millions.

Lotteries also hold their appeal well in tough times. They account for nearly one-third of the global gambling market, with sales expected to rise this year as the bets on offer grow more diverse: not just scratch cards and number draws but also online and mobile offerings, a small but increasingly important business.

Money taken from the general population and used by the government as it sees fit is also known by another name. Henry Fielding hit upon it in his ballad-opera “The Lottery”, written in 1731: “A Lottery is a Taxation,/Upon all the Fools in Creation;/And Heav'n be praised,/It is easily raised,/Credulity's always in Fashion:/For, Folly's a Fund,/Will Never Lose Ground,/While Fools are so rife in the Nation.” According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, in 2006 American lotteries generated nearly $17 billion in revenue for state governments. The chance of winning the Mega Millions jackpot is about one in 176m. For comparison, an individual's chance of being struck by lightning is around one in 750,000.

And if lotteries are a tax, they suffer from being regressive. A study carried out in 2009 by Theos, a British think-tank, found that poor Britons spent a greater part of their income on lottery tickets, particularly scratch cards, than rich ones. In South Carolina, households with incomes of less than $40,000 a year account for 28% of the state's population but more than half of its frequent lottery players.

More than one American in five thinks that buying lottery tickets constitutes a sound retirement plan, according to a Tax Foundation study. And research carried out by the Federal Reserve Bank of St Louis in seven American states found that much of the money spent on lottery tickets came from some form of government assistance (such as social security, unemployment or disability benefit).

Buying a lottery ticket may be a foolish bet, but given that people are so willing to play, it is unrealistic to ask governments not to back the game. European enthusiasm for lotteries has already led Française des Jeux, Camelot and MUSL, which runs Mega Millions and Powerball, to start planning for a global lottery, with a tentative launch date of 2012.