The EuroMillions or Euro lottery, formulated in France, UK, and Spain started selling lottery tickets on Saturday, July 7, 2004. And in Paris, France the first lottery draw took place on Friday, February 13, 2004. Although the only participating countries at the start were Spain, United Kingdom, and France, by October 2004 six other countries joined: Austria, Belgium, Ireland, Luxembourg, Portugal, and Switzerland.
All nine countries combine the total of all Euro lottery tickets, making a supersized jackpot, and the growth of the European Union will lead to more citizens buying EuroMillions tickets, causing the jackpot to grow even more. You heard right. More people playing the lottery equals more money to be won and even larger jackpots than what we already have.
This is how you play EuroMillions
It’s simple, really. You pick seven numbers. You choose five numbers from 1 to 50, and two Lucky-Star numbers from 1 to 9. Then every Friday, two machines randomly pick a set of five numbers and a set of two numbers.
The odds of winning EuroMillions
If you want to win the jackpot, you have a 1 in 76 million chances to do it, but to win any prize at all, you have a 1 in 24 chance, and that’s not bad. One great thing about EuroMillions is that if nobody wins the jackpot, it rolls over into the next week, growing larger each time it rolls over, and the Euro lottery jackpot can get as high as 50 million Euros. Because of a new rule effective on February 9, 2007, the jackpot can only roll over 11 times. If no one wins the jackpot on the eleventh roll over, then the prize money is used to increase the lower prizes, and that means more money for the average winner.
The Euro lottery made another rule for Super Draws. Super Draws give out a total of about 100 million Euros, and it takes place two times a year.
EuroMillions big payouts
Sixteen people won the Super Draw jackpot on February 8, 2008 by choosing five of the main winning numbers and one of the Luck Star winning numbers. They took home 8.6 million Euros each, making the total for that EuroMillions lottery jackpot a whopping 130 million Euros.
The highest EuroMillions lottery payout in the UK went to forty-year-old Angela Kelly on August 10, 2007. She was a postal administrator from Scotland.
On November 17, 2006 the EuroMillions jackpot rolled over eleven times, bringing the total to 183 million Euros, which was shared by 20 happy winners.
Who can play EuroMillions?
You must be a resident in one of the nine participating countries in order to play EuroMillions lottery, unless you buy a ticket online. E-lottery (supporting more than 133 states) makes it possible for almost anyone from anywhere to buy a lottery ticket. To significantly increase your chances of winning, you may wish to join a syndicate. By joining a Euro lotto syndicate, you bump your chances up by 36 times.
