Frequently Asked Questions about the Euro Millions game

• How do I play the Euro Millions game?
  Playslips are available at UK, French and Spanish lottery retailers and tickets went on sale for the first draw from Saturday 7th February 2004 onwards (except, oddly, for Spanish players who had to wait until Monday 9th February 2004 to buy tickets). You must pick 5 unique numbers between 1 and 50 and a further 2 "Lucky Star" unique numbers between 1 and 9. The UK playslip lets you play up to 4 draws in advance.

  Surprisingly, you can be a newborn baby and buy a Euro Millions ticket legally in France (there is a no minimum age limit...those crazy French gambling toddlers, eh?), whereas you have to be at least 16 years old in the UK and at least 18 years old in Spain if you want to buy a ticket.

  Note that there will be no UK subscription facility available due to the UK ticket price fluctuation (see later). There are no immediate plans for online ticket purchasing for the game either, but this may change. There may even be interactive digital TV and mobile phone payment methods eventually (though they aren't even in place for other Camelot games yet, so I wouldn't hold my breath).

• How is the UK playslip laid out?
  There are 4 "boards" containing 7 main rows (1-8,..,41-48 then a final row with just 49 and 50) and a 3 by 3 grid of the 9 lucky star numbers to the right of the main nuumbers. You can mark Lucky Dip for any of the boards (as usual, this overrides anything you mark on that board), mark it void and, for the whole playslip, there's a 1-4 week set of boxes for you to pick the number of draws you want to play for.

• How much does it cost to play?
  In France and Spain, tickets will be fixed at a price of 2 Euros each. In the UK, however, the Euro has not been adopted as a currency (there hasn't even been a referendum on it yet, unlike other European countries) and hence Camelot will "convert" 2 Euros into sterling every 4 weeks and, yes, round the price of the UK ticket up to the nearest 10p!

  You'd have thought that the launch month's price would therefore be £1.40 with 1 Euro = 68.5p at the moment (courtesy of www.xe.net), but no, Camelot are charging £1.50 for the tickets during February 2004. Any "surplus" after Euro to sterling conversion (in this case, something like 13p) is added to the UK (non-jackpot) total prize pool only, so UK winners will benefit from a slightly boosted lower tier prize fund.

• How often is the draw?
  It is a weekly draw every Friday with the first one therefore taking place on Friday 13th February 2004 (yes, unlucky Friday the 13th...). It is currently scheduled for 9.00pm UK time each week (10.00pm CET for France and Spain of course), but that might change in the future.

• Can I see the draw live?
  Er, yes and no. For the UK, the satellite company BSkyB have bought the rights to air the draw live, so the draw will air at 9.00pm-9.05pm UK time each Friday on Sky One. Unfortunately, this only covers about 30% of UK TV households (yes, including mine luckily), so the majority of players will have to rely on this Web site (OK, or the official site if you really want to wait an extra 30 minutes!) or BBC/ITV teletext instead. Note that the draws will initially take place in Paris, France, but I suspect this will rotate around to the other 2 countries in time.

  Unlike Camelot's official site, the equivalent official French site has plenty of details on the TV show. The first show (perhaps all the French ones ?) was be hosted by the "semi-sparkling" Sophie Favier (we got some Irish woman from a UK TV studio instead) and it was broadcast live on TF1 in France and TVE2 in Spain. Strangely, the French site keeps referring to "Angleterre" (England) being involved in the game, but it's actually the UK (including Northern Ireland). It also says the estimated jackpot prize pool will be revealed [to French viewers - no such luck for UK viewers] 2 hours and 10 minutes before the draw, but that's actually before the terminals close !

• Have Camelot been promoting Euro Millions in the UK?
  Well, yes, but they only got approval from the lottery regulators to actually run the game less than a week before the tickets went on sale! Hence, there's not been much a build-up in the UK until a day before the ticket sales started, at which point Camelot started a TV ad campaign with the slogan "there's something different about Fridays" (yeah, like the draw clashes with the UK terrestrial premiere of the last ever series of Friends - oops!). It also doesn't help that the first draw's live show on Sky One isn't even listed in most UK TV magazines...double oops! Needless to say, some "celebs" were dragged out for the launch of the game. Two mainstream UK TV magazines, TV Times and What's On TV, have consistently failed to include the live TV show in their Friday evening Sky One listings (first three draws haven't been listed so far), but it does now appear that all the other weekly TV magazines are now admitting the show exists...

• What's all this about France and Spain - does my hard-earned cash end up in "Johnny Foreigner's pockets" if a non-UK person wins?
  Camelot kept giving me conflicting information about this, but the latest information I have (and this is now backed up by their Rules and Procedures booklet) is that the total prize pool for all prize tiers is shared across all countries participating (50% of that draw's ticket sales - also note that any jackpot rolls over to the jackpot prize tier only, which is otherwise normally 20% of the total prize pool).

  7% of the total prize pool goes to a "Booster Fund" which the rules booklet suggests is a Super Draw top-up reserve fund and the remaining 73% of the total prize pool is split amongst the non-jackpot prize tiers. Note that this 73% can be "topped up" in the UK only by (number of UK tickets sold*(difference between 2 Euros and the cost of UK tickets)) and hence it can make individual UK prizes either slightly larger or even slightly smaller than other countries' prizes depending on the sterling/Euro currency rate. All countries playing in Euros, however, will have identical individual prizes compared to each other in each of the tiers, with the only difference being that, of course, the more tickets sold in a country, the more winners that they will have in that tier for that country.

• Can there be Euro Millions Super Draws?
  Yes, in fact it's been confirmed that the first 4 Euro Million draws will each have a £10m guaranteed Super Draw jackpot (15 million Euros according to the French/Spanish organisers).

• What about rollovers?
  Unlimited and uncapped, which is good to hear. Sadly, human greed dictates that large jackpots attract more players (confirmed by the awful Extra game, where people lemming-like join in buying tickets as the jackpot continues to roll over for weeks on end, despite the odds remaining 14m to 1 to win any prize at all !). This means that the unwon Euro Millions jackpot only rolls over to the jackpot prize pool of the next draw, meaning that none of the 11 lower tiers get any prize pool boost at all. Since the jackpot odds are 76m to 1, this effectively means no-one other than the jackpot winners get larger-than-normal individual prizes, regardless of the number of rollovers.

• Machine and ball set trivia please, I"m desperate for it...
  There will be 4 machines for the 5 from 50 part of the draw, named Stresa 1 to Stresa 4 (Stresa is a picturesque town in northern Italy in case you're wondering) - obviously only one will be used on draw night, with the other three as backups if something goes wrong. For the 2 from 9 Lucky Star section of the draw, there are similarly 4 machines - Paquerette 1 to Paquerette 4 (Paquerette appears to be a type of rose and also is the French word for a wild daisy). The 50 main balls are claret (dark red) coloured and the 9 Lucky Star balls are gold coloured - there is one ball set per machine in case you're wondering.

  After watching a couple of draws on TV, something struck me about the Lucky Star balls - there is no star motif on the balls themselves ! In fact, the only difference between the main balls and the Lucky Star balls is the main "background" colour of the balls (claret vs. gold) - each ball in either type of set has multiple white almost-circular panels onto which is displayed the number in black (with an underline for the 6 and the 9 as you might expect). It does then beg the question why Sky One's ball captions insist on showing the 7 numbers in red (Lucky Star included, which doesn't even have any red on the balls anywhere !) with a white background.

• Who's running the French part of the game?
  The French side of things is run by La Francaise des Jeux and they now have some official pages on the game available. Google's translation is fantastically amusing:

  "Euro Million is a play of pulling common to several countries of Europe, operated in France by the Frenchwoman of the Plays. Pulling takes place each Friday evening."
  (After a late night bevvy and a curry no doubt...)

  It seems that the French get to "subscribe" (multi-week play) for 5 weeks instead of the 4 weeks that the UK playslip offers and they also have a permed offering (select 5 to 9 main balls and 2 to 9 star balls and then perm them to pay up to 336 Euros for one game). It's interesting to see that Camelot didn't offer this perming option to its UK players (maybe they were scared of potential flak for the huge amount you could end up paying - you can spend 4,000 Euros (£2,750) on one Euro Millions playslip in France, which even I must admit is far, far too much for even a syndicate to play).

  The French site has also graciously put up a screenshot of the French playslip, which differs from the UK one by having 5 boards instead of 4 and allowing 1-5 weeks "subscription". From my best guess, not filling any of the 1-4 weeks boxes means "1 week in total" whereas filling one of the boxes means "1+[1-4] weeks in total" - seems like a possible area of confusion to me (people could easily mark 1 and end up paying for 2 weeks' worth of tickets when they meant 1 week).

  Like the Camelot's official UK lottery site, you can't play the Euro Millions online on the official French site either. The French side of the results (remember that all the lower tiers results are separate for each country) will appear on the official French site, though it's not clear whether or not they will release ticket sales info (Camelot sure as heck are refusing to for the UK side of the game).

  Rather bizarrely, the Euro Millions French TV campaign (warning: proprietary Windows Media format) concentrated on selling the game to the French poor by highlighting that rich French will, er, "lose their privileges". Imagine if Camelot directed a UK TV ad for any of their games directly at poor people - there would be utter outrage !

• Who's running the Spanish part of the game?
  Spain's side of things is handled by Loterias y Apuestas del Estado, whose main claim to fame is the running of the large annual El Gordo Spanish draw. They now have some info about the game and this includes the latest results (including, conveniently, the pan-European total prize pool and ticket sales in Euros) and an awkward 9-page Spanish-language 539K PDF. The PDF does at least have an image of the Spanish playslip, which is pretty similar to the French one. It also indicates that the Spanish players also have a perming option with up to 252 lines per ticket (seems like UK folks are the only ones not allowed to massively gamble :-) ).

• There's more than 3 countries in Europe, right?
  Yes, well done for spotting that. Rumour has it that another 5 European countries may join the "Euro Millions" game if it proves successful. This will help to increase the size of the shared jackpot pool of course, but won't help with the sizes of the lower tier prizes (which is yet another reason why I think rollovers should be added to the total prize pool, not just the jackpot prize pool).

  One of those countries "late to the party" may well be the Republic of Ireland, whose National Lottery says it will sell Euro Millions tickets (for 2 Euros each, like France and Spain) there before the end of 2004. If Camelot chief Dianne Thompson's quote in the esteemed Daily Mirror tabloid is anything to go by, Euro Millions might eventually go worldwide (er, then it'd have to change its name...).

• What about the prizes - will they be big?
  They may have got this right with Euro Millions by making the odds of winning the jackpot much worse (more rollovers) and allowing unlimited (and uncapped) rollovers. We could start with £10m and grow to £50m+ if there's enough rollovers - time will tell. The full rundown of the prize tiers is as follows:

  Main  Stars        Odds      Est. prize (£)
    5     2    76,275,360 to 1  14,000,000.00  [No exact figure from Camelot!]
    5     1     5,448,240 to 1     321,119.20
    5     0     3,632,160 to 1      68,902.00
    4     2       339,002 to 1       6,430.80
    4     1        24,215 to 1         206.70
    4     0        16,143 to 1         137.80
    3     2         7,705 to 1          96.50
    3     1           551 to 1          30.80
    2     2           538 to 1          20.10
    3     0           367 to 1          13.70
    1     2           103 to 1           7.90
    2     1            39 to 1           6.70
  

  The overall chance of winning is 24 to 1 and the prize tiers are pari-mutuel (i.e. the individual prize in each tier varies depending on that week's ticket sales, the rollover amount [jackpot tier only] and the number of winners in that tier). The prizes are paid out as a tax-free lump sum as you'd expect. You've no doubt noticed that there's no prize for matching 2 main numbers and 0 stars, plus the payouts may be to the nearest 10p (it's not clear if they'll stick to that or not).

  The official leaflet promoting Euro Millions has some seriously conflicting odds and estimated prizes compared to the back of the playslip, but I have stuck with the odds and estimated prizes quoted by both the Camelot phone line and the back of the Euro Millions playslip (though I suspect the former were reading from the back of a playslip :-) ).

• Anything special I need to know about claiming a prize?
  As you might expect, you must claim your prize in the country you bought the ticket in (so don't be silly and come back from your Spanish summer holiday with a winning Spanish Euro Millions ticket and expect to claim it in the UK). Apart from that, the usual UK claiming rules apply (180 days to claim, go to a lottery retailer to claim small prizes, a Post Office for medium prizes and a regional lottery centre for large prizes). One strange anomaly is that French players of Euro Millions only have a mere 60 days to claim their prize, which seems a bit on the harsh side.

• OK, bore me about those worthy Good Causes, will you?
  28% of the ticket sales in each respective country will go to Good Causes in that country. Predictably, we may "Euro-share" the prize pools, but no way will the countries agree to "Euro-share" the Good Causes money equally.

• Any other trivia you've picked up?
  There's a possibly illegal Web site out there selling Euro Millions tickets already (scam merchants were quick off the mark weren't they - they even use the official logo to bamboozle potential victims...selling tickets at £4 a go instead of £1.50 and, even worse, keeping 10% of all your winnings if you win over £1,000 might put a lot of people off though), but I'll leave it to you to find the site, since the cheeky scallywags don't deserve any more publicity. Important note: At this moment in time, you cannot buy or sell Euro Millions tickets online - anyone doing so is probably breaking the law.

  A rather bizarre advertising campaign by the French Euro Millions organisers included a spoof Web site telling you how "dangerous" the game is to play ("no to Euro Millions game" even !). Sorry, no Google translation this time because the site is in Flash :-( I remain unconvinced that is a particularly clever way to bring the punters in and I doubt Camelot would ever try such reverse psychology on the UK public.

  Camelot's official Web site messed up the first draw's prizes/winners information badly on the first draw evening (even ignoring the fact that the Belgian auditors forced a delay of 2 hours to collate the results). They put the individual prizes in the total prize pool column and then proceeded to divide the individual prize by the number of winners and put that figure in the individual prize column [slaps forehead - duh! Sounds like a "zero testing policy" to me...].For many hours they were displaying a £0 individual prize for lower tiers and, oh, £3 or so for the higher ones ! They mostly fixed the prize amounts and their positions the next morning, but still were rounding prizes up to the nearest pound (should be to the nearest 10p) - a problem they decided they couldn't fix quickly so, er, they pulled all prize and winners information for the first draw for 3 solid days until they worked out that %.2f can display floating point numbers :-) They even "helpfully" put up the Camelot phone line number to get the prizes/winners info that they'd embarrassingly pulled - dontcha just love this InterWeb thing ? :-)

  Talking of the first draw, if you tried to use it to extrapolate how often we'd get a UK jackpot winner on average, it makes for very grim reading indeed. A rough estimate of the number of tickets sold in the UK is (pan-Euro sales amount/2)*(total UK winners)/(total Euro winners), which translates to (53,121,018/2)*79,647/970,522=2,179,719 tickets. With odds of 76,275,360 to 1 to win the jackpot, that means we'd get a UK jackpot winner almost exactly every 35 draws (yes, that's every 8 months !). However, such extrapolation from the first draw is flawed because of a) the panic rush Camelot had to get the game out and, more importantly, b) the presence of both single and double main Lotto rollovers during the first week of Euro Millions sales. I'll revise these figures after the second draw, which I think will be more representative because the TV and poster ad campaign is in full swing now and the Wednesday and Saturday main Lottos are "normal" draws.

• So, are you going to play and, if not, why not?
  I won't be playing the Euro Millions game for the following reasons:
  • The tickets cost 50% more than the main UK Lotto and yet it's more than 5 times harder to become a millionaire.

  • Rollovers should be added to the total prize pool and not just to the jackpot prize pool - this is a mistake that Camelot make with all their rollover-capable games. It means that a rollover game is really no different in terms of prize sizes from a non-rollover game, except for one person in 76 million (if indeed someone does manage to hit the jackpot that week).

  • There will probably never, ever be a subscription system in the UK because of the variable price of the ticket due to Euro currency conversion.

  I just can't understand why Camelot didn't change the main UK Lotto into a 6 from 50 game with unlimited/uncapped rollovers (that are added to the total prize pool rather than the jackpot prize pool) and then allowed France and Spain to join. That would have been a cracker of a lottery and brought huge sales back again to the ever-withering main UK Lotto game. As it stands, Euro Millions will simply leech sales from the main UK Lotto game, especially as the big rollover jackpots kick in.

  

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