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Lottery Madness in Germany

Fire Your Boss!

German lottery ticket retailers can barely keep up with the demand. At €29 million, the largest jackpot in the history of the German lottery awaits a lucky winner. So what would you do with all that money? SPIEGEL ONLINE has a few suggestions.

AP

This customer hopes she will be the lucky winner as she fills out a lottery ticket in Frankfurt.

Or perhaps you've always dreamed of putting together your favourite soccer team? Many football clubs are so desperate for a financial boost that you could surely negotiate for a little co-management and a warm seat on the trainer's bench.

The politically motivated lottery winner could even change the course of history. €29 million would certainly prop up a resistance movement that might just topple some small military dictatorship.

The current €29 million jackpot is the largest of its kind in the 50-year history of the German lottery system. Many retailers have had to restock their ticket rolls or hire additional employees to cope with the lottery-inspired gold rush. Meanwhile, the lottery organizers are raking it in, with revenues up by between 10 and 20 percent.

Germans are expected to spend over €50 million to try to win the jackpot, even though the chances of actually winning the jackpot are phenomenally low. In the "6 out of 49" system, the odds of choosing six right numbers plus the correct seventh "super-number" are one in 140 million.

Moreover, many people don't realize that 52 percent of the prize money is spent on taxes and administrative fees, and that only 48 percent of revenues are paid out. But even though the lottery is such a bad deal for its consumers, nearly 20 million Germans play it week after week.

Some people have lucky numbers; others claim to have a fool-proof system. Mass circulation Bild has even told its readers which lottery numbers have come up less frequently in recent draws, such as the number 13. Sadly, this doesn't make them any more (or less) likely to be among the winning numbers: the probability is always the same.

No one cracked the jackpot in last Saturday's draw, but six players did get six numbers right, winning an average of about €630,000 each. The greatest single cash-out to date occurred in May 2005, when someone in Baden-Württemberg won €23.9 million.

Big wins don't alway bring happiness. An unemployed man named only as Lothar K. won the equivalent of €2 million in 1994 and spent it all on sports cars, race horses and parties in Mallorca. The tabloid press closely followed the antics of "Lotto Lothar". Four years later, his marriage in ruins and all his money spent, he died from the effects of excessive alcohol consumption.

jto/ddp/dpa

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