A German woman who works as a cleaner has scooped a £79m ($103m) jackpot, the largest win ever in an online gambling environment.
The 36-year-old woman lives in Berlin, Germany. She won the jackpot on June 1 after using her mobile phone to buy tickets for the Eurojackpot draw.
The numbers that she used were 4, 7, 14, 19, 21, 30 and 32, which her mother had selected on the Lottoland UK website.
This lottery site has more than eight million users from around the world, with 30 different lotteries from different countries being part of its offering. If a punter manages to match every one of the winning numbers in a given draw, the sum will be paid to them in the form of insurance money.
Both Lottoland and the winner have now been entered into the Guinness Book of World Records for this achievement.
Controversies over lottery platforms
While these feel-good stories are always nice to see when punters win big, there are many concerns about platforms such as Lottoland.
These types of platforms are often called synthetic lotteries and there have been calls worldwide for them to be banned. As they allow players to participate in lotteries and jackpots without having to purchase an actual ticket, it means that the revenues are decreased for the nationally run lotteries.
Most of the time, the majority of the funds garnered by the national lotteries go into social programs, such as education, healthcare, and looking after the underprivileged.
The UK has already banned synthetic lotteries, for exploiting the many loopholes that existed in the system. The ban came into effect in April.
This led to a number of synthetic lotteries coming together to fight the ban in the courts. Lottoland was joined by Multilotto, Jackpot.com and the WorldLottery Club. Dubbed the Lotto Betting Group, they have filed a letter before claim to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport in the UK.
The group said: “[It] is unreasonable for the Secretary of State to impose a licence condition prohibiting betting on EuroMillions draws. The Lotto Betting Group believes that the decision to prohibit betting on non-UK EuroMillions draws was unjustified and was based on inconclusive evidence.”
Despite their legal challenge, they are not expected to make much headway on this matter.
Lotteries labelled as ‘parasites’
Extensive efforts have also been made in Australia to bring in a similar ban against synthetic lotteries. In the Northern Territory province, third-party lotto operators have already been banned, with other provinces expected to follow suit in the future.
The synthetic lotteries responded robustly after they were called “parasites” by the chief executive of the National Lottery in Ireland in an interview with the Irish Times.
They argued that they contribute towards growing the lottery market as a whole and that they are one of the leaders in innovation in the space. They point toward figures that showcase the growing profitability of the estate lottery in Ireland since they entered into the market.
It is clear that authorities across the globe are not keen on synthetic lotteries, but there is no denying their popularity. Some compromise may be reached in the future.
