Gambling: Winner Dennis Totton of Saint John has no problem with $5 cost of ticket

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Adam Huras
Telegraph-Journal

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Dennis Totton doesn't have a problem pulling out a crisp $5 bill from his wallet each week for a lottery ticket instead of scrounging for pocket change.

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Kâté Braydon/Telegraph-Journal

The new Lotto Max has replaced Super 7.

And other Atlantic Canadians don't seem to mind either.

Lotto Max, the newest game by Atlantic Lottery Corporation, is outpacing the dollar sales of its now retired predecessor Lotto Super 7 a month after its inception, according to a company spokeswoman.

The corporation has seen little problem with the now $5 play - up from $2 for the old game.

"I will play it regardless," said Totton, whose Saint John family was one of the first to reap the benefits of Lotto Max.

His family won $275,176 on one of the new lottery's first draws.

"I thought the increase was a little weird, but then there are more prizes so it makes it worth the money," Totton said. "You'll get more out of it when you win."

A total of 471,416 free tickets were won on Sept. 25 - the game's first draw. At $5 per ticket, the game generated more than $19 million in sales.

"Atlantic Canadians are really enjoying Lotto Max because we are trending eight per cent ahead of budget," said Atlantic Lottery Corporation spokeswoman Courtney Pringle. "What we thought Lotto Max would bring in - we are eight per cent above that."

Lotto Max is a national lottery introduced to replace Super 7, which had its final draw on Sept. 18. The new tickets went on sale the next day and the first draw was Sept. 25.

Like the Super 7, Lotto Max players must match seven numbers to win the jackpot.

While Super 7 jackpots started at $2.5 million, Lotto Max starts at $10 million. The defunct draw also paid out 45 per cent of ticket revenue in prize money, while Lotto Max will pay out 48 per cent.

By comparison, Lotto 6/49 pays out 47 per cent.

Once the Lotto Max jackpot reaches $50 million, additional prizes of $1 million also will be drawn - a new feature giving more people a chance to win big bucks.

Pringle said that while the success of Lotto Max is hard to quantify against Super 7 because of the disparity in jackpot sizes, when comparing similar sized jackpots it appears to have greater sales volumes.

She said there is a connection between larger jackpots and a greater number of customers.

"Before we launched Lotto Max we talked to a lot of Canadians to find out what they would want in a game," Pringle said. "What they told us is that they wanted bigger jackpots but that they also wanted more prizes."

The chance of matching all seven numbers on a Lotto Max ticket is one in 28,633,528.

Totton still heads from home five minutes earlier than usual one day each week to stop at a nearby convenience store before making his way to the Sitel call centre to work the evening shift.

He has purchased a ticket each week for more than a decade.

"I haven't really heard any complaints with the new game," Totton said. "I explained it out to one woman one day who didn't see the point in buying the ticket at that price.

"I said it's the price of a bottle of pop basically and I guess it's the price you pay for just a little better chance to win."