Lotto Statistics

Lotteries rely on numbers, the winning numbers, and the amounts won too. Numbers create statistics! Lotto statistics are endless, from number frequency to biggest jackpots to odds of winning each prize.

It’s a mathematicians dream, and with that in mind we’ve put together a list of eight of our favourite lottery stats. These fun facts are taken from pages and pages of lottery statistics, and we hope you’ll find them interesting! Some of these numbers will blow your mind!

Biggest jackpot

The biggest lotto stat we have for you is a rather big sum, and that is the biggest ever jackpot. To date, the biggest cash jackpot ever won, anywhere in the world is a Powerball jackpot worth US$1.6 billion won in 13 January 2016. However, this doesn’t hold the prize for the biggest single winner as it was split three ways.

Biggest single winner

That accolade goes to a Powerball winner from May 2013 from Florida who scooped a Powerball jackpot worth US$590 million on a single ticket. This took the record of the biggest single winner of any lottery in the world.

Biggest winner in Australia

To put those values into perspective, we can compare them with other world lottery jackpots. For instance, we have one of the Oz Lotto statistics of the biggest jackpot won on that draw. It’s a huge jackpot and yet it pales in significance at AU$100 million when compared with the world record jackpots.

Largest number of millionaires

The lotto statistic for the highest number of millionaires ever created on a single draw goes to the pan-European EuroMillions draw. That draw was held in July 2012 and was set to create one hundred millionaires in a single draw in a special Super Raffle. However, eight prizes were never claimed and so the total number of winners was ninety-two.

First instances of lotteries

The first ever recorded lottery type draws in the world were the Chinese Keno draws. Keno slips from the Han Dynasty still exist today from between 205 and 187 BC. It’s thought that the lottery financed major government projects very much in the same way as today’s lotteries go to help projects and good causes.

Longest odds

The lottery draw with the longest odds of winning in the entire world is the SuperEnalotto where odds of matching all six balls are a staggering 1 in 622,614,630! This is because the Italian draw uses a ball pool of 90 numbers, making choosing the six winning ones a great challenge.

Highest number of rollovers

Understandably then the SuperEnalotto also holds the lotto statistic for the most number of rollovers of a single draw. In 2010, the thrice-weekly draw rolled over for eight months solid without a single jackpot winner until won by a syndicate in the October to the tune of €177,800,000.

Shortest odds

Our research shows that the lottery with the shortest odds in the world is the Swedish Lottery where odds of winning the jackpot are 1 in 6,724,520! Compared to the SuperEnalotto odds, this one should be easy!