Lottery corporation to examine jackpot claims

The Atlantic Lottery Corporation admits there appears to be a problem with the estimation of the size of some of the national Lotto 6/49 jackpots.

This comes as criticspoint out that the jackpots at times are overestimated.

Wednesday night, for example,a 6/49 jackpot advertised earlier in the week as an "estimated $4 million" turned out to be worth only $3 million.It's the 12th time in a row a Wednesday jackpot advertised for that amount has failed to materialize, raising concern among players and critics.

The Atlantic Lottery Corporation, which sells 6/49 in the four Atlantic provinces, says there does appear to be a problem.

Paula Dyke says the ALC plans to contact Canada's other four lottery corporations and have something done.

"I acknowledge that if we're consistently lower than $4 million, we need to look at why that is and what we should do about it."

Glen Tibbett bought tickets on Wednesday's draw and didn't win, but was surprised the potential jackpot was so much lower than advertised.

"I think when you're expecting $4 million, you're expecting $4 million," said Tibbet."That's quite a big difference.That's $1 million difference."

Rod Hill, a professor of economics at the University of New Brunswick, reviewed all 6/49 draws back to October and found that lottery officials were overestimating the $4 million "base jackpots" most of the time for Saturday draws, and all of the time on Wednesday draws.

For example, the Wednesday 6/49 jackpots on Oct. 4, Nov. 22, Dec. 6,Dec. 13, Jan. 3, Jan. 10, Jan. 17 andFeb. 14 all were advertised to be worth $4 million, and all paid out less than $3.7 million.That's the cutoff that is supposed to trigger an estimate being lowered to $3.5 million.

Hill believes lottery officials had to know their advertised $4 million jackpots on Wednesdays were overstated.

"This is not just an estimating error," he said. "Of the [Wednesday] sample we've looked, at 100 per centof the sample is below $4 million. It's not just a 50/50 chance. It's always less than $4 million and significantly less as well."