In 2002, you were about 10 times more likely to die after being bitten by a poisonous snake or lizard than to win a Lotto 6/49 jackpot.
You are three times more likely to be killed in a traffic accident driving 16 kilometres to buy your ticket than winning the jackpot. Die - during an average lifetime - of flesh-eating disease (1 in one million).Be killed in a terrorist attack while travelling (1 in 650,000).Those odds are so long that you are more likely to: For $5, you are buying a one in 28,633,528 chance at winning at least $15 million. Your odds are even worse for winning Lotto Max. Pay $2 and your odds of becoming a millionaire are approximately 1 in 14 million. Those of us who do play the lottery - and approximately one-quarter of Canadians play weekly - have heard those odds many times before. That was won by Marie and Kirby Fontaine of Sagkeeng First Nation, northeast of Winnipeg, in November 2009. There have been a few since then, including a $50 million prize in Canada's newest national lottery - Lotto Max. It was Canada's greatest attack of lottery fever. Out of almost 50 million tickets sold for that Lotto 6/49 draw, one extraordinarily lucky group had beaten the odds of one in 13,983,816.
Total ticket sales for that draw reached $99,474,164. Source: Statistics Canada Survey of Household Spending What we spend on gambling, by income groupĮxpenditure as percentage of total income
