The industry and where the money goes
Operators do not hide why they lengthen the odds — they publish the reasoning. The interesting work is checking it against what the change did to a ticket.
Lottery redesigns are announced, not sneaked through. Operators publish a rationale, and it is usually accurate as far as it goes. What the announcements leave out is the arithmetic on the other side of the trade.
This article pairs the two. The dated list of changes with derived odds is in the history of jackpot inflation; the mechanism that makes lengthening odds work is in jackpot fatigue.
Powerball, October 2015. The Louisiana Lottery's president stated the reasoning plainly:
"Since then, the game's playing population has grown to include 47 lottery jurisdictions, and jackpots are consequently hit faster. This change will help produce those eye-popping jackpots that players have come to expect with Powerball."
Mega Millions, October 2017. The change was presented as a way to "create even larger jackpots" and to help "participating states to raise money for local good causes", with the note that "jackpots are also likely to grow more quickly" (Lottery.net).
Mega Millions, April 2025. The stated aim was a "fast track" jackpot game with "value-added features that better differentiate it from Powerball" (Louisiana Lottery).
Oz Lotto, May 2022. The Lotterywest FAQ frames the change around a higher starting jackpot — from $2m to $3m — prizes across Divisions 2 to 7 up by an average of up to 8%, and overall odds of any prize improving from 1 in 55 to 1 in 51 (Lotterywest).
Three claims recur: bigger jackpots, better overall odds, better lower-division prizes. All three are usually true. The fourth fact — the jackpot got substantially harder to win — is usually in the small print.
| Change | Jackpot odds | Overall odds | Price | What was given back |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Powerball, Oct 2015 | 175,223,510 → 292,201,338 (1.67× longer) | 1 in 32 → 1 in 25 | $2 unchanged | Match 4 + Powerball rose from $10,000 to $50,000; a 10× Power Play option below $150m |
| Mega Millions, Oct 2017 | 258,890,850 → 302,575,350 (1.17× longer) | — | $1 → $2 | Faster-growing jackpots |
| Mega Millions, Apr 2025 | 302,575,350 → 290,472,336 (4% shorter) | 1 in 24 → 1 in 23 | $2 → $5 | Built-in 2×–10× multiplier on every play; non-jackpot prizes up to $10m; start jackpot $20m → $50m |
| Oz Lotto, May 2022 | 45,379,620 → 62,891,499 (1.39× longer) | 1 in 55 → 1 in 51 | — | Divisions 2–7 up ~8%; start $2m → $3m |
| UK Lotto, Oct 2015 | 13,983,816 → 45,057,474 (3.22× longer) | — | £2 unchanged | New raffle tier; matching two numbers wins a free line |
| EuroMillions, Sep 2016 | 116,531,800 → 139,838,160 (1.20× longer) | — | rose | Minimum jackpot €15m → €17m; European Millionaire Maker raffle |
The overall-odds improvement is real, and it is nearly always produced by the same trick: shrink the supplementary pool while enlarging the main pool. The two moves pull the jackpot and the bottom division in opposite directions, and the operator gets to advertise both.
Powerball 2015 is the clean case. The bottom division pays for matching the Powerball alone:
That single tier — the most frequent prize in the game — improved from 1 in 55 to 1 in 38, which is most of the move from "1 in 32" to "1 in 25" overall. Meanwhile the white-ball pool going 59 → 69 lengthened the jackpot by 1.67×.
Oz Lotto did the same thing with a different lever. Adding a third supplementary number creates extra ways to win the lower divisions without touching Division 1 at all, so the overall odds improve while the top prize gets 39% harder.
The general rule: improvements to overall odds and worsening jackpot odds are not in tension. They are usually produced by the same redesign, on purpose.
The number that actually changes for a jackpot-motivated player is the cost of a unit of jackpot chance.
| Game and era | Price | Combinations | Cost to cover the matrix |
|---|---|---|---|
| Powerball to Oct 2015 | $2 | 175,223,510 | $350.4m |
| Powerball from Oct 2015 | $2 | 292,201,338 | $584.4m |
| Mega Millions Oct 2017 – Apr 2025 | $2 | 302,575,350 | $605.2m |
| Mega Millions from Apr 2025 | $5 | 290,472,336 | $1,452.4m |
| UK Lotto to Oct 2013 | £1 | 13,983,816 | £14.0m |
| UK Lotto from Oct 2015 | £2 | 45,057,474 | £90.1m |
Mega Millions 2025 is the striking row. The odds genuinely improved by 4% — the only such case on the list — and the price rose 150%, so a jackpot-focused player pays 2.40× more per unit of jackpot chance than before. The extra money is not lost: it buys the built-in multiplier and much larger lower-division prizes. But it is a different product at a different price, not a better deal on the same one.
Not much, and that is the point worth understanding. A matrix change reallocates a broadly fixed prize fund; it rarely alters how much of each ticket is paid out overall. What it changes is the shape of the payout — more weight on a rarer, larger top prize, or more weight on frequent small ones.
The share of each ticket returned as prizes, game by game, is set out in return to player by game and the payout ratio league table, and how the fund is carved into divisions in how prize pools are split. The jurisdictional money flow — prizes, duty, retailer, good causes — is in where each pound or dollar goes.
A player who only ever wanted the jackpot is worse off after almost every redesign on this list. A player who cares about winning something at all is generally better off. Both statements come from the same change.
Operators are not concealing anything. The Louisiana Lottery said out loud that the purpose was to produce "eye-popping jackpots". Mega Millions said the purpose was a "fast track" jackpot and features to differentiate it from Powerball. Oz Lotto led with a higher starting jackpot and better lower divisions.
What no announcement puts in the headline is the ratio. If you want to know what a redesign did to you, take the new combination count, divide by the old one, and multiply by any price change. Everything else in the press release is a description of how the difference was spent.
Run your own comparison with the odds calculator and the cost-per-chance calculator, and see where the games stand today in the best jackpot odds in the world.
Last verified: 2026-08-29