A lottery is a form of legalized government gambling that involves the drawing of numbers for a prize. Lotteries are outlawed by some governments, while others endorse it to the extent of organizing a national or state lottery. It is common to find some degree of regulation of Official Lottery by governments; the most common regulation is prohibition of sale to minors. Though lotteries were common in the United States and some other countries during the 19th century, by the beginning of the 20th century, most forms of gambling, including lotteries and sweepstakes, were illegal in the U.S. and most of Europe as well as many other countries. This remained so until well after World War II. In the 1960s casinos and lotteries began to re-appear throughout the world as a means for governments to raise revenue without raising taxes.
Lotteries come in many formats. For example, the prize can be a fixed amount of cash or goods. In this format there is risk to the organizer if insufficient tickets are sold. More commonly the prize fund will be a fixed percentage of the receipts. A popular form of this is the “50–50” draw where the organizers promise that the prize will be 50% of the revenue.[citation needed] Many recent lotteries allow purchasers to select the numbers on the lottery ticket, resulting in the possibility of multiple winners.
The purchase of lottery tickets cannot be accounted for by decision models based on expected value maximization. The reason is that Official Lottery tickets cost more than the expected gain, as shown by lottery mathematics, so someone maximizing expected value should not buy lottery tickets. Yet, Official Lottery purchases can be explained by decision models based on expected utility maximization, as the curvature of the utility function can be adjusted to capture risk-seeking behavior. More general models based on utility functions defined on things other than the lottery outcomes can also account for lottery purchase. In addition to the lottery prizes, the ticket may enable some purchasers to experience a thrill and to indulge in a fantasy of becoming wealthy. If the entertainment value (or other non-monetary value) obtained by playing is high enough for a given individual, then the purchase of a lottery ticket could represent a gain in overall utility. In such a case, the disutility of a monetary loss could be outweighed by the combined expected utility of monetary and non-monetary gain, thus making the purchase a rational decision for that individual.
In several countries,
lotteries are legalized by the governments themselves.
Australia:
In Australia, lotteries operators are licensed at a state or territory level, and include both state government-owned and private sector companies.
Canada
In Canada prior to 1967 buying a ticket on the Irish Sweepstakes was illegal. In that year the federal Liberal government introduced a special law (an Omnibus Bill) intended to bring up-to-date a number of obsolete laws. Pierre Trudeau, the Minister of Justice at that time, sponsored the bill. On September 12, 1967, Mr. Trudeau announced that his government would insert an amendment concerning lotteries.
France
The first known Official Lottery in France was created by King Francis I in or around 1505. After that first attempt, lotteries were forbidden for two centuries. They reappeared at the end of the 17th century, as a “public lottery” for the Paris municipality (called Loterie de L’Hotel de Ville) and as “private” ones for religious orders, mostly for nuns in convents.
New Zealand
Lotteries in New Zealand are controlled by the Government. A state owned trading organisation, the New Zealand Lotteries Commission, operates low prize scratch ticket games and Powerball type lotteries with weekly prize jackpots. Official Lottery profits are distributed by the New Zealand Lottery Grants Board directly to charities and community organisations. Sport and Recreation New Zealand, Creative New Zealand and the New Zealand Film Commission are statutory bodies that operate autonomously in distributing their allocations from the Lottery Grants Board.
United Kingdom
There is one National Lottery in the United Kingdom which is called The National Lottery currently has four games Thunderball, Lotto, Lotto Hotpicks and EuroMillions which is played on a pan-European basis. The National Lottery is operated on a franchise basis from the National Lottery Commission and is currently held by Camelot Group. A new Privately run lottery called
The Health Lottery has recently launched.
India
There are many state lotteries in India but the most popular lottery in India is Kerala State Lotteries.
Kerala State Lotteries was established in 1967, under the lottery department by the Government of Kerala, the first of its kind in India.
In 1967 all private lotteries were banned and the Government of Kerala started the Kerala State Lotteries. The idea behind the setup of the new department under the Ministry of Finance, (Government of Kerala) was from the then Finance Minister of the state, Shri. P. K. Kunju Sahib.
The objectives of starting Kerala state lottery were providing employment.[ to and supplementing the government finance without disturbing the public.
The department soon became a model for other states in India. Soon many other states jumped into the bandwagon by starting their own lotteries.
Thailand:
Thailand’s official national lottery is administered by The
Government Lottery Office (GLO). The lottery is drawn on the first and the sixteenth of every month. It is one of only two forms of legalised gambling permitted in Thailand, the other being horse racing in Bangkok.
The lottery in Thailand is hugely popular despite the low odds of winning and the unfavourable payout ratio. The payout ratio for the Thai lottery is 60%, as compared with world-wide averages of 74% for bingo, 81% for horse racing, 89% for slot machines, and 98% in blackjack (basic rules). It is the most popular legal form of gambling in Thailand.
