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Red Cross + Lotto = Cybersuccess?

Well, we'll all be watching the Red Cross PLUS Lotto http://www.pluslotto.com over the next few weeks leading up to the first official draw on April 18th 1997. This may well prove to be an important date in the history of cyberspace gaming. A make or break time for new stand-alone long odds games on the 'Net.

For the first time, a real recognized "Brand Name" See RGT Story 'New Red Cross Lotto' will be associated with a lottery billboard on the superhighway. Until now, all electronic operators have been snidely referred to by Politicians and the Media around the world as criminals and con men whom you couldn't trust with your baseball card collection, let alone your credit card.

No doubt some gaming sites "are" a bit of a worry and the guys running them used have numbers on their chests instead of name tags. But, even the legit operators, like Liechtenstein Interlotto, have had problems getting the level of play needed to make a long odds game like lotto work the way it should.

Although Interlotto has had 1 million Swiss Francs (About 1.1 million US) on offer as the top prize for over a year, the level of play has been very low. The weekly play has been at best in the thousands, for much of the year it was in the hundreds. Interlotto needed hundreds of thousands playing over the 'Net to make the 6 from 40 game work.

What they are hoping is the credibility and high standing of the Red Cross will rub off and the new lottery will overcome many of the concerns the cyberpublic has had with handing over credit card details and playing online gambling. They also hope that they will get the publicity in the worldwide mainstream media to keep the game in the public eye.

The logic behind the move is impeccable. There seems to be every reason to believe that the Red Cross lottery "will be" a better brand name and image in the marketplace. To start off, it is easier to pronounce than "Liechtenstein Interlotto" and it's a darn sight easier to spell. (There have been 9 different spellings in my stories alone).

I'm just not convinced it will work for a long odds game like Lotto. I don't think it would work even if it was the Mother Teresa's Lotto or the Papal Lotto for that matter (and don't forget it was the Italians who started Lotto).

The simple reason is that the numbers just do not compute yet for a stand-alone on-line "Internet only" long odds lottery. All long odds games are mass market games. You need a big market to take up the volume of play needed to make combinatorial formulae work the way it should and to generate the BIG prizes needed to promote play.

Take the Red Cross PLUS Lotto 6 from 40 game. The combinations of 6 from 40 is around 3,880,000, let us call it 4 million for the ease of calculating. So probability says that if 4 million combinations are played, there should be 1 combination the same as the numbers drawn out of the barrel. On this basis, PLUS Lotto would work if 400,000 people entered each week and on average played 10 games.

The thing is, probability is a shorthand way of saying what should happen in a perfect mathematical world. The thing is people are involved, most of whom do things their own way and ignore theory. They tend to duplicate number combinations or play in a less than random fashion. This means that, in any week, even with 4 million entries the full "cover" of the game will not be there. Thus, a 6 number combination drawn may not be hit by the players. (Thus the Law of Large Numbers).

What this means is you need about 6 million plays to get between 0 and 3 winners in any week. Thus, by this formula, PLUS lotto needs 600,000 players at an average of 10 x 1 Swiss Francs games per entry to have the 6/40 game rolling along the way we are used to.

Too little play and it seems no one ever wins it. Too much play and the prizes won seem to be too small. This is why you see game formula being changed as their popularity grows. The more recent Industry technique is to bring out a longer odds game over the top of the existing game to get the huge roll up jackpots that have become part and parcel of Lotto marketing in the 90's.

The problem is the "Internet is not yet a mass consumer market. It is a specialized niche market. The Netizines numbers quoted by the cyberhype brigade are wildly misleading. You will find a cure for "'Netitis" (excessive optimism about the size of the Internet Market) at Online and Internet Statistics Reality Check 96 http://www.newnetworks.com/statsexecsum.htm. You might like to try to tell me these figures are a little out of date; then, fine, double them and they still SCREAM "niche market."

The Internet "consumer" is not a reflection of the "mass market". They are a computer literate elite who fall into socio economic groups not known to be heavy "lottery" players. (Interestingly enough, they are more likely to be interested in "other" forms of gaming than the mass market). They are control freaks who don.t like to leave too much to random chance. (It comes from too many Netscape 3.0 crashes).

I think our Liechtenstein and Red Cross friends have a little too much faith in the "Hype" and are likely to be disappointed in the results their PLUS Lotto game. If they get enough publicity this time round, it might make a difference. We will no doubt know in a few months if this is the winning formula for an Internet only long odds lottery.

This is not to say it is not a good move. In fact, it is a very clever one. It will create all sorts of problems for the HHH release 3.0s of this world as well as the odd Nitro sniffing New Yorkers. Their "consumer fraud" and "penal" charges against off-shore lottery and gaming operators may not look as good in the press when they are jailing Red Cross workers like some tin-pot dictatorship.

What will US legislators do if they find these "criminals" running World Wide Web lotteries are people like "Save the Children," "Freedom from Hunger," "Greenpeace" and "Amnesty International." Can you imagine the headlines? "NEW YORK STATE TROOPERS ARREST "SAVE THE CHILDREN" PRESIDENT AT KENNEDY AIRPORT" or "GREENPEACE RAIDED. BETTING SLIPS (Made of recycled paper) SEIZED".

The Red Cross Lottery will inherit some good newly-developed games from Interlotto. These are the more "Instant" and "short odds" games they have developed recently. The combination of the Red Cross name with these products more suited to niche market play may indeed work.

We will keep our fingers crossed. (Come on, don't go mmmm, it's the best available pun to end on).

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