Canada ‘s Lotto Max lottery draw is about to undergo a major change—not a small one, but many changes—which will take effect on April 14th, a few weeks from now.
According to the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation, the top prize for Tuesday’s Lotto Max draw is expected to be $55 million CAD, and there are also four additional Max Million jackpots worth $1 million CAD each. This is the biggest Lotto Max jackpot since March 3, when a ticket sold in Toronto won a prize of $75 million CAD. No one won the massive $50 million jackpot in the final draw last Friday.
One of the two Max Million lottery tickets, each worth $1 million CAD, has been won – OLG says the ticket was sold in Hamilton. The massive CAD 55 million prize comes just three weeks before Lotto Max’s major changes take effect. The Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation previously announced at a press conference that starting this spring, the price of a lottery ticket will increase from $5 to $6.
This is the first price increase for Lotto Max lottery tickets since its launch in 2009. But the changes are not just about ticket price increases; there are also many attractive changes to the prize money. Most importantly, the jackpot cap has been increased from CAD 80 million to CAD 90 million. In addition, a new $100,000 CAD prize will be added for each draw, based on the jackpot amount. This will give people the opportunity to try for more prizes, similar to the previous Max Million, even if they don’t win the jackpot. The press release stated:
“For example, when the jackpot is $10 million CAD, 10 additional $100,000 CAD prizes will be drawn, and so on, until the jackpot reaches $90 million CAD, when 90 additional $100,000 CAD prizes will be drawn.” “This is on top of the potentially ever-growing million-dollar prize money.”
The Maxmillion bonus is an additional $1 million CAD bonus that will be available once the jackpot reaches $50 million CAD. However, there are no eligibility requirements for this newly added 100,000 yuan prize. Furthermore, don’t feel cheated even if ticket prices rise, because each lottery ticket will contain four sets of numbers, unlike before when there were only three. OLG stated, “With these new features, the overall odds of winning will be higher than in previous versions of Lotto Max.”
However, there’s a saying that buyers are never as shrewd as sellers. The biggest winning number has changed from 50 to 52, which may mean that the odds of winning the grand prize have become even lower. OLG stated that the odds of winning the jackpot will change from 1 in 33,294,800 to 1 in 33,446,140. Fortunately, the overall odds of winning any award will increase—from one in seven to one in five and a half. April 14 will be the first draw date for the new version of Lotto Max, and the changes will take effect across Canada.