WHAT’S THE STORY?
THE jackpot for the EuroMillions Lottery has soared to an astonishing £184m, and as it was not won on Tuesday night the same jackpot will rollover and still be available on Friday night.
Judging by the screaming headlines and social media it would appear that EuroMillions Lottery insanity has struck the UK which of course voted for Brexit and by logic should be having nothing to do with this European nonsense.
Except, of course, that Scotland didn’t vote for Brexit and the EuroMillions Lottery was specifically exempted from Brexit, not least because British Lottery operators Camelot were one of the co-founders of the giant prize scheme which now involves nine countries and raises millions for good causes.
So it is quite acceptable for even sane people to get excited about the possibility of winning the mammoth prize. Mind you, according to the EuroMillions website the odds of picking the five numbers and the two Lucky Stars is one in 139,838,160, which means you are 13 times more likely to be struck by lightning this year.
WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?
THE jackpot cannot rollover again, after nobody won the £174m jackpot last Friday.
The top prize will now stay at the ceiling figure of £184m for a further four draws. If nobody wins the jackpot, on the fifth draw the jackpot will cascade down and be shared among all those ticketholders at the next prize tier, which could see the creation of many multimillionaires.
WHO HAVE BEEN THE BIGGEST WINNERS?
THE biggest previous jackpot won by a UK ticketholder was £170m. The winner remained anonymous, as have this year’s UK winners of £122m in April and £11m in June.
The biggest winners to go public were Colin and Chris Weir from Ayrshire who won £161m in July, 2011. Believers in independence, the Weirs famously made seven figure donations to the Yes cause and the SNP. They also made many donations to charities and Colin Weir bought the controlling interest in Partick Thistle FC before he enabled the supporters to take over their club.
Winning the £184m jackpot would put the lucky ticket holder ahead of Adele, Sir Tom Jones and Calvin Harris on the Rich List, but that massive sum would not be anywhere near the wealth of
Sir Leonard Blavatnik, the Ukrainian-born oil and media magnate who has been named as the UK’s richest person with a fortune of £23bn.
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