Ever wondered why Powerball can hit $150 million while Weekday Windfall stays at $1 million? It all comes down to how jackpots are structured. Lottery jackpots typically fall into two categories: growing jackpots and fixed jackpots.
Growing jackpots
Most major lotteries (Powerball, Oz Lotto, Saturday Gold Lotto, Super 66) use growing jackpots. Here's how they work:
- Each draw, a certain percentage of all ticket sales is allocated to the first division (jackpot) prize pool.
- If nobody wins the jackpot, that entire pool rolls over to the next draw.
- The rolled-over amount is added to the next draw's jackpot allocation from ticket sales.
- This continues until someone wins.
Here's where it gets interesting: while the percentage allocated to the jackpot stays the same, the number of tickets sold increases as the jackpot grows. Bigger jackpots attract more players, which means more money flowing into the prize pool, which means the jackpot grows even faster.
This is why jackpots don't grow linearly — they can grow almost exponentially. A jackpot might sit at $3 million for a few draws, then rapidly climb to $20 million, $50 million, and beyond.
The sharing problem
There's a catch with growing jackpots: more tickets sold also means a higher chance of multiple winners. This is why our value scores factor in expected shares. A $150 million Powerball might sound incredible, but if three people win it, each gets $50 million — and the value-per-dollar calculation changes dramatically.
Fixed jackpots
Fixed jackpots work differently. They fall into two sub-types:
Guaranteed fixed prizes
Weekday Windfall (formerly Monday/Wednesday Lotto, now drawn Mon/Wed/Fri) guarantees a fixed first division prize of $1 million regardless of ticket sales. Set for Life guarantees $20,000/month for 20 years ($4.8 million total). These prizes are the same whether the jackpot is won every draw or not.
Raffle-style prizes
Prize home lotteries like Dream Home Art Union and Yourtown offer fixed prizes (usually a house plus cash). A set number of tickets are sold, and exactly one winner is drawn. The prize value is determined before tickets go on sale — it doesn't grow based on sales.
Why this matters for value
Understanding jackpot mechanics is crucial for assessing value. Growing jackpots create the biggest swings in our daily rankings — a lottery can jump from last place to first when its jackpot rolls over enough times. Fixed jackpots are more stable in value but can still be competitive, especially when growing jackpots are at their base levels.
At Lotto Logic, we track all of this automatically so you always know where value sits at a glance.