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CTV Vancouver
Friday's record-breaking $110 million Lotto Max jackpot has some Metro Vancouver players calling for changes to a rule that allows a set of numbers to win a maximum of only $60 million.
Lotto Max splits up any money over $60 million into separate, $1 million prizes called MaxMillions.
"It's designed to allow the players to feel like they can dream about it, but it's not too much that they wouldn't know how to manage it," said Angela Law of the British Columbia Lottery Corporation.
"It's essentially giving us more chances to make people millionaires in Canada."
As with most jackpots over $60 million, Law said more people are buying tickets "because the frenzy and the anticipation and the dreaming really get big."
Now, some of those players say they want a chance to win the entire thing.
"I want the big, big, big," said one player. "Sixty is not enough. Let's go up to $100 million, $150 million."
Another cited the United States' Powerball jackpots, which can reader the hundreds of millions.
According psychologist Dr. Joti Samra, removing the cap could drive up business.
"From a psychological end, we know that the larger that end game is, the larger the outcome, the more strongly our emotions go around that," Samra said, "so certainly from a marketing standpoint and from a purchasing standpoint, that likely would increase the frenzy."
But the BCLC says Canada's population can't sustain a limitless Powerball-type lottery, and if only one set of numbers is drawn, there are fewer winners.
"I'd rather have it spread around," said a woman buying her ticket Friday. "I don't need that much money...Sixty is enough."
With files from CTV Vancouver's Shannon Paterson
The Canadian Press
TORONTO - Once again the $60 million Lotto Max jackpot has gone unclaimed.
No winning ticket was sold for last night's big prize.
The draw also offered 50 Maxmillion prizes of $1 million each, 33 of which were claimed by a total 45 winning tickets, meaning several will be shared.
The jackpot for the next Lotto Max draw on June 8 will remain at approximately $60 million, but the number of Maxmillion prizes will rise to 52.
