I was intrigued today to hear that the cost of a 'euromillions' lottery ticket has recently increased by 50p in order to include a per-country raffle.
Imagine my disappointment to learn that there is a single prize, for a million pounds. Where's the fun in that? It's not a proper raffle at all.

I propose an enormous, annual, country-wide raffle with proper prizes donated by large and small businesses and well-wishers. Tickets would be sold from tear-out books of different colours, with the remaining halves collected together for the grand draw - it's just how it must be done.
To make things slightly more managable the entrant would write their name & address on the drawn half of the ticket. The draw would of course require a large mixer; I'm thinking a converted cement lorry drum should do. Prize-drawing would take some time, and be similar in scale to electoral vote-counting. I propose that this process be televised on the parliamentary channel. (If the draw is during the summer recess, this uses otherwise wasted bandwidth.)

The postal system would of course be crippled for a week or two afterwards, as millions of prizes wound their way to the lucky winners.

Now that's excitement. Instead of knowing that you'd lost immediately after the draw in a boring old lottery, you'd know that you'd probably won *something*, particularly if you'd bought a few pages of tickets. What would it be - bubblebath, a packet of biscuits, a can of soup, a bottle of advocaat, maybe even a hoover or some other grand prize?

After a month or so, a website would host a database giving the prize list, the lucky winners, who won what - so players can check it's all above board. And of course list the sponsors.

Proceeds go to charity, of course.
-- Loris, Feb 09 2010

+ for giving me an idea... even though I've now decided not to post it.
-- rcarty, Feb 10 2010


I keep reading "Giga-Rifle".
-- FlyingToaster, Feb 10 2010



random, halfbakery