DES MOINES, Iowa – Powerball lottery organizers are betting that bigger jackpots will entice more people to play, but gamblers are going to have to dig deeper into their wallets to try their luck.
Tickets for the multistate game are doubling in price to $2 beginning Jan. 15.
“With the price of everything else going up, there’s not much you can get for a dollar anymore,” said 28-year-old Ryan Raker of Des Moines, who buys a ticket once a month. He says he’ll probably play less frequently now.
Powerball’s move follows the model of scratch ticket games, which once were all $1 but now are offered at higher prices with the chance for bigger prizes.
The evolution of scratch tickets and the creation of families of games that offer tickets at different prices has proved successful across the country, said Rebecca Hargrove, president of the Tennessee Lottery. Scratch games like Win for Life in Illinois, Jumbo Bucks in Tennessee and the Crosswords game in Iowa have all been successful, Hargrove said.
Lottery officials believe increasing the price of the game will make it more attractive to players, said Terry Rich, spokesman for the West Des Moines-based Multistate Lottery Association, which runs Powerball.
The number of Power Ball numbers to choose from will decrease from 39 to 35. That will improve the odds of winning from 1 in 192 million to 1 in 175 million.
Picking the right numbers will have a bigger payoff: The starting jackpot is rising from $20 million to $40 million. The amount won for matching all five numbers but not the Power Ball will increase from $200,000 to $1 million.
The move is a strategy to differentiate the game from Mega Millions, the other big money, multistate lottery game that is sold for $1 a ticket. Both games are sold in 42 states, plus the U.S. Virgin Islands and Washington, D.C. Each game has drawings twice a week.
Rich said sales may dip at first but likely would climb as jackpots soar. Half of ticket sales are returned to the states where Powerball is played to help pay for government programs.
