US moves a step closer to a national lottery

On Sunday dozens of new US states will start to sell both Mega Millions and Powerball lottery tickets as the US moves a step closer to a national lottery, as opposed to two separate inter-state lotteries. Over the past year various states across the US have started selling both Powerball and Mega Millions tickets but as of Sunday both of the US lottery’s will have many more players.

By the spring 43 states plus the US Virginia Islands and Washington DC will sell both Mega Millions and Powerball Lottery tickets. Margaret DeFrancisco, co-chair of a committee for both lotteries and president and CEO of the Georgia Lottery Corp has gone on record as saying “We expect there will be larger jackpots faster. We expect there to be more winners” but other US lottery analysts believe otherwise. Because more combinations of lottery numbers will be bought for the Mega Millions and Powerball lotteries each week the jackpots will be won more often which means that the prizes will be smaller.

However, this appears to be a temporary as plans are no firmly in place for a genuine US national lottery in the not too distant future. DeFrancisco said that providing that public reaction to the cross selling of the two lottery’s tickets is positive it’s very possible we could see a new US national lottery launched by spring 2011, but many details are still to be ironed out.

Click here to play Mega Millions

In the meantime, while we wait for this super US lottery to materialise, you can still buy online lotto tickets for both the Mega Millions and Powerball lotteries by clicking the tabs at the top of the page.