Eurojackpot will up the ante for lottery enthusiasts from next week

Lotto and Viking Lotto will both remain in the assortment of games offered by the national betting agency Veikkaus

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The Finnish national lottery and pools organisation Veikkaus will launch a new transnational mega-lottery, Eurojackpot, on Friday, March 23rd.
      The first numbers of the new lottery will be drawn here in Finland next week, and the game will also be playable in Germany, Denmark, Slovenia, Estonia, and the Netherlands.
      The lottery draw will be divided into two parts.
      The first five numbers come from a group that contains numbers from 1 to 50, after which two additional lucky star numbers from 1 to 8 will be drawn from a separate machine.
     
The jackpot in the new lottery will usually be bigger than that in the traditional Lotto and Viking Lotto, amounting at least to EUR 10 million, but if no winners are found to claim the jackpot, it can roll over up to EUR 90 million.
      Veikkaus will arrange the lottery draw at the premises of the Finnish Broadcasting Company YLE in Helsinki’s Pasila every Friday night.
      The results will be broadcast on television at midnight. The correct numbers will be transmitted from Finland to other countries’ EuroJackpot organisers.
     
On the other hand, a EuroJackpot coupon will cost EUR 2.00 per line, which is double the price of the traditional Lotto line, while the probability of winning the jackpot is clearly smaller.
      In the traditional Lotto, the probability is 1:15 million. In the Eurojackpot, the odds are 60 million to 1.
      Ari Aarnihuhta, Vice President for Product Management at Veikkaus, believes that there will be enough demand for all lotteries.
      ”We do not believe that Eurojackpot could much affect the popularity of the traditional Saturday evening Lotto. But the impact on Viking Lotto could be bigger”, Aarnihuhta commented.
      Aarnihuhta estimates that the Saturday national draw will remain the most popular lottery, with its annual turnover of EUR 500 million.
      The sales volume of Eurojackpot is believed to amount to the same figure as that of Viking Lotto, namely about EUR 100 million per year.


Previously in HS International Edition:
  New mega-lottery to be launched in Finland (1.12.2011)

See also:
  EUR 10 million record Lotto jackpot goes to two lucky winners (3.10.2011)
  Finns again spurn record Lotto jackpot - EUR 10 million next Saturday (26.9.2011)

Links:
  Eurojackpot (Wikipedia)
  Veikkaus

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