There was a time the when idea of winning a million dollars, pounds or euro in a lottery would have seemed preposterous. Since the late 80s and early 90s, however, lottery jackpots the world over have skyrocketed – as population growth has resulted in an equally exponential increase in the number of people playing. Today, million lottery jackpots are virtually commonplace.
If you’re considering purchasing a ticket in the hopes of a million lottery win – or, perhaps, have already purchased one – here’s a little bit more about lotteries around the world that award millions of dollars, pounds, euro and other major currencies every year.
Pan-Continental and Transnational Lotteries
The advent of the million lottery and then the multi million lottery came at the same time as the emergence of transnational lotteries, sometimes also referred to as pan-continental lotteries. Transnational lotteries are super lotteries that incorporate multiple countries into a single competition. This geographical expansion has also greatly increased the number of tickets sold.
EuroMillions, for example, encompasses Spain, France, Austria, the United Kingdom, Belgium, Luxembourg, Ireland, Portugal and Switzerland. This multi million lottery has been making millionaires all over Europe since the inaugural draw in February 2004. To date, the largest ever multi million jackpot awarded in a EuroMillions draw was a staggering € 52 630 236.
Other notable transnational million lottery competitions include the Nordic Viking Lotto and EuroJackpot, among many others. American multi-state million lottery competitions like Powerball and Mega Millions USA are equally large. In fact, Powerball USA recently paid out the biggest multi million lottery jackpot in history, which you’ll read more about shortly.
Online Lotteries and Online Tickets
Another major reason for the spike in million lottery prizes is the emergence of internet lotteries and online lottery play. Whilst purely online lotteries do exist, the majority of online million lottery options are based – if generally indirectly – on real-life traditional land-based lotteries.
In some cases, land-based million lottery tickets are available for players to purchase online. Many operators and governments, however, are wary of this option over concerns related to online security and internet fraud.
Far more commonly, the million lottery available to players online can be described as a sort of clone of the original land-based game. In other words, players can play exactly the same numbers for a jackpot of exactly the same size but not the same jackpot. Such an independently administered million lottery will only be available to players outside of the location of the original lottery.
This means that anyone, anywhere in the world can play “cloned” versions of these lotteries and win equally massive million lottery jackpots similar to multiple online bingo NZ jackpots.
The Biggest Lottery Wins in History
Although winning any million lottery can surely make dreams come true, a very fortunate few have hit what one might call jackpot of jackpots – the biggest million lottery wins in history.
The top lottery prize of all time – to the tune of US$ 1.6 billion – was paid out just recently, on 16 January 2016, by multi-state American million lottery, Powerball. As there were three ticket holders, this jackpot would pay out a multi million lottery prize of over US$ 530 million per winner.
The second- and third-highest lottery jackpots in history – $656 million and $648 million in 2012 and 2013, respectively – came from US Mega Millions.
Europe’s largest-ever million lottery jackpot of €185 million was paid out to a single winner in Scotland by EuroMillions in 2012, whilst the largest million lottery prize in Asian history was RMB¥ 570 million and was awarded to a single ticket holder by the China Welfare Lottery.
