For those of you who enjoy the convenience of shopping online, Oz Lotteries is an excellent means of buying lottery tickets from home. They offer a wide range games, including OZ Lotto, Powerball, and the Saturday Lotto. In addition to this, they offer syndicate options and repeat purchase facilities. The primary downside of Oz Lotteries is that their standard ticket prices are more expensive than what you would pay at a newsagent. For example, a Saturday Lotto ticket costs $0.80 per line while newsagent prices start at $0.6125 per line. Oz Lotteries do offer periodic bonus offers, however, that can make ticket purchases cheaper than those in newsagents.

Below is an overview of Oz Lotteries and my experience with them thus far.

Why Lotteries?

Any ‘rational’ sports better will ask the question, “why buy a lottery ticket?” The odds are stacked against you… The chances of a 1st division win are next to none… Well, these statements are true, and classical economics fails to explain why consumers do choose to take on outrageous odds for the chance to win big. A number of new economic theories have been presented, and Prospect Theory, pioneered by Kahneman and Tversky, is one of the best regarded. You can read more about it on Wikipedia, but essentially:

Personally, when I buy a Lotto ticket I feel I am paying for the “what will I do if I win” fantasy I get to play out in my head before the draw. Ironically, I am a net winner with Lottery tickets after picking up $3,000 a number of years ago. My second best haul was about $40, and I’ve had numerous $12.50 – $30 wins.

Services

Oz Lotteries offers pretty much everything except Instant Scratchies. They offer the following games:

• 6 from 38 pools – learn more
• Saturday Lotto – learn more
• Monday Lotto – learn more
• OZ Lotto – learn more
• Wednesday Lotto – learn more
• Powerball – learn more
• $2 Jackpot Lottery
  • Just like a raffle, each $2 Jackpot Lottery has a set number of ticket numbers to be sold (225,000). Once all are sold the draw for that particular lottery takes place. You may choose to be allocated either random (to a maximum of 5) or sequential ticket numbers – but you can’t select your own numbers.
  • For each draw 9,646 prizes are available; 3,217 win cash and 6,429 win free tickets
  • The odds are 1:24 of winning a prize
• $5 Jackpot Lottery
  • Just like a raffle, each $5 Jackpot Lottery has a set number of ticket numbers to be sold (180,000). Once all are sold the draw for that particular lottery takes place. You may choose to be allocated either random (to a maximum of 5) or sequential ticket numbers – but you can’t select your own numbers.
  • For each draw 11,425 prizes are available; 3,810 win cash and 7,615 win free tickets
  • The odds are 1:16 of winning a prize

Sign Up Bonuses & Specials

New customers can enjoy one of two signup bonuses.

• One free Oz Lotto game – $1.20 value
• Two free Powerball games – $1.50 value

Oz Lotteries also offers periodic specials. For example at the moment all members receive 18 free games when they purchase 30 games of ’6 From 38 Pools’ (offer expires February 20th). As I alluded to earlier, this makes your purchase cheaper than what is available at newsagents.

My Experience & Conclusions

Oz Lotteries provides a fantastic service, although you often pay more for a ticket than you would at a newsagent. The price premium is for the convenience of buying from home. The syndicate options also make Oz Lotteries worth checking out.

In terms of functionality, you can’t fault them. The website is easy to use, and they accept credit card and Paypal as payment methods. You can withdraw winning funds to a designated bank account.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t think you don’t need to deposit funds to qualify for a free game. You have little to lose by signing up, checking out the site, and receiving a free ticket.

(1) Source: “Prospect Theory”, Wikipedia, URL: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prospect_theory, accessed Feb 20th, 2010.