BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — Louisiana is upgrading its flagship state lottery game.
The Louisiana Lottery said it will begin offering starting jackpots of $500,000 for the Louisiana Lotto with the Aug. 5 drawing. The change doubles the starting jackpot and marks only the fourth time Lotto has changed in its 28-year history, KATC-TV reported.
“There will be more to love about Lotto this summer with more frequent $1 million-plus jackpots that our loyal Lotto players enjoy,” Lottery President Rose Hudson said in a news release Wednesday. “Our players have spoken, and we listened with a Louisiana game that is still just a dollar.”
To create the larger starting jackpots, the redesigned game will require players to select six numbers out of 42. That bumps the overall odds of winning to 1 in 34.4 The previous matrix was six numbers out of 40 with overall odds of 1 in 30.
The match-5 and match-4 prizes will continue to be pari-mutuel, meaning the actual prize won will be determined by dividing each respective tier’s prize pool by the total number of winners for that drawing.
Because the matrix will change, the lottery will temporarily suspend the multidraw option for Lotto to prevent future draw purchases that eclipse the new version’s sale date of Aug. 2. Multidraw will return to full functionality under the new game matrix Aug. 2.
By: Associated Press
