Sunday, August 2, 2009

Losers, Prizes And Winners - About the Lottery and a Great Deal More

By Steve Conniery

A Lottery is basically a form a gambling where a player picks a series of numbers and if these same numbers are drawn by the lottery company and match, then the ticket holders win a prize. In some countries their governments forbid this form of entertainment but in others it has been endorsed and a national lottery has been formed and regulated.

The way the lottery has been formulated is very unique, firstly the prizes are very enticing as they are either large sums of cash or big prizes and secondly the rewards are always guaranteed to be a certain percentage of the profits and so not only are players satisfied that there is some guarantee of winning but there is always a risk also to the organizer if tickets aren't sold. Another way to ensure fairness is to provide a unique number for each ticket sold as this demonstrates uniqueness. Also because recent lotteries allow purchasers to select their own numbers sometimes multiple winners occur.

The great news is that the winnings of the national lottery are completely tax free and are paid out immediately in one lump cash sum; this is especially true in Canada, Australia and the United Kingdom where the prizes are actually distributed immediately after the winner has been declared.

Controversially the United states only present the lottery winners with half of the advertised jackpot as they require winners taxes to be withheld from the lump sum prize. The winner is however given the option between annuity payment or a one time payment, the annuity option allows the winner to have regular payments dispersed over a period of time and this can range from anything between ten and forty years. Although the one time payment is much smaller.

The Lottery has become so huge the world over that there are now very few countries that don't have their own national lottery of some kind. And prizes can range from a few hundred to a few thousand or even a few billion pounds depending on the country and lottery played. The largest lotteries however are those from Spain, Japan, France, Italy and the UK with the US lotteries in New York, Massachusetts and Texas not that far behind.

Statistics show that collectively the five largest lotteries in the world offer possible winnings of up to $10.4 billion with the Loterias y Aquestas del Estado in Spain offering the largest payout. Then its the Mizuho Bank Ltd in Japan as the second largest with $0.2 billion less than Spain, then third in line with $9.8 billion dished out, is the Bettors at Frances in Francaise des Jeux of France. Italy boasts the fourth with $8.9 billion and the National Lottery of the UK is the fifth. Then finally the Kookmin Bank Lottery in Korea and the Sisal Sports Italia S.p.A. lottery of Italy are in eighth and ninth positions

You can join a lottery by buying a ticket from one of the syndicate organizers

About the Author:

0 comments:

Post a Comment