What Does Lottery Rollover Mean?

Winning the lottery has been something each and everyone of us has dreamt about at least once in our lifetime. And, a lot of you have even tried their luck by playing it a couple of times. But regardless of how often you’ve tried it, you must have heard the term a lottery rollover being used. And if you’re just a casual player, you might be asking yourself what does that actually mean? Well in this article we’ll dive deep and try to explain this term to the more casual players amongst our readers.

What Is a Lottery Rollover?

Put simply, a lottery rollover happens when the prize of the ongoing cycle is not won, it rolls over to the next cycle and it’s added to the prize pool of the next game.

Why Does a Rollover Happen?

The main reason why lottery rollovers happen is to increase the jackpot prizes for the next game. This in term generates more excitement about the next draw simply because there is a bigger prize for you to win.

With the extra attention garnered by implementing the bigger jackpot, lotteries collect even more customers which makes rollovers a great passive advertisement for the lottery. And, for you, the player, rollovers are a great way to increase the chances of winning big because they create more sales for the lottery and as jackpots are founded in part by ticket sales this creates a chain reaction which benefits both you and the lottery.

How Many Times Can a Lottery Rollover?

There are hundreds of different lottery games around the world, many of them include a lottery rollover and many of them don’t. This means that each game decides how many times a rollover can happen (and if it can happen at all). There are two ways that a lottery can limit how they do their   rollovers and it’s by implementing a limit on the number of rollovers that can happen or by limiting the total cash prize that can be reached by rollovers.

Lotto Rollover Limit

As we already mentioned above, different games have different rules when it comes to rollovers. However, the most common is a limit on rollovers which limits the total number of rollovers that are allowed to happen. If no ticket matches all main numbers after the last rollover, the money is split between the winners in the next winning tiers.

How Common Are Lottery Rollovers?

Rollovers are a common occurrence in lotteries simply because the chances of anyone winning the lotto jackpot within the first instance are not that great.

But, an important note to mention is the fact that even though rollovers are a regular occurrence in the lottery, they will not increase the chances of you winning the jackpot.

In fact, according to the National Lottery you have 1 in 45,057,474 to win the lotto. So there isn’t an easy way to boost your chances to win the jackpot. Lottery games really come down to whoever has the most luck will win it – Or whoever has bought most tickets.

What Happens if Nobody Wins a Rollover Jackpot?

When a lottery meets all of the rollover limits that they set, that money needs to go somewhere.

• The first rollover that we’re going to talk about is called a “Must Be Won” draw, and the rules for its rollovers are slightly different to the national lottery rules. So, for this draw, if nobody wins the prize when the rollover limits are met, the jackpot is shared amongst the lower tier winners.
• Next, we’re going to speak about Lotto, and according to its rules, when the limits are met, the rollover money including the jackpot trickles down and increases the prizes for the lower tier winners that have guessed a minimum of 3 numbers.
• The Euromillions rollover rules are a bit different. When the limits are met, the rollover money goes to the winners of the next highest winning tier.

Conclusion

Understanding lottery rollovers is important because they are a crucial part of lottery games. It’s a simple and very exciting concept that has worked since its implementation. However, you need to understand that there are different rules for each game and these rules are set to stop huge corporations from buying all tickets and making a profit.

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