Book details
The essay is taken from Peter Howland's new book Lotto, Long-drops & Lolly-scrambles: The Extraordinary Anthropology of Middle New Zealand.
The essay is taken from Peter Howland's new book Lotto, Long-drops & Lolly-scrambles: The Extraordinary Anthropology of Middle New Zealand.
AFTER FOUR YEARS in Europe I returned to New Zealand in 1989 to find a country obsessed with a weekly, computerised lottery called Lotto. Everywhere I went people talked about what they would do if they won Lotto, this reaching almost frenzied levels as the Saturday draw approached. Their winning dreams customarily included paying off their mortgages, buying new cars, embarking on world holidays or financially assisting members of their extended families. Some fantasised about telling their bosses where to stick it, though most outwardly rejected a Lotto-endowed life of idle affluence on the basis that they “wouldn’t know what to do with themselves.”
Even my grey-haired mother was hooked. Before my departure she had held firm to the middle-class virtues typical of her generation, especially hard work and sensible spending. She had hitherto avoided most forms of gambling, apart from buying the odd raffle ticket to support the local school or service club. Now she religiously bought a ticket every week and even worked part-time in the local Lotto shop. Mum was clearly enamoured with the prospect of winning — or at least selling a ticket for — the first division prize. Like many of her era, though, she did have some reservations. She felt that one million dollars was too much money for one person to win and rejoiced whenever the top prize was shared among several people (actually the average first division payout for many years was around $400,000). In fact my mother’s Lotto play had become ritualised. She bought her ticket on the same day every week and used the same self-selected numbers, many of which had personal significance as they corresponded with the birth dates of family members. After a busy Saturday’s work (50% of all Lotto tickets are bought on this day, and 25% between 5 and 7pm), she would make her weary way home to watch the televised draw at 8pm. Over the years my mum’s hopes of winning the first division have been consistently thwarted. However, the occasional thrill of winning a lower division prize, many years’ worth of dreams about winning and the knowledge that part of her expenditure has helped worthy causes have ensured that she is basically happy with Lotto — although she does from time to time tell herself off for continuing to play “such a daft game.” In most respects my mum is little different from many other Kiwis. New Zealand’s most comprehensive gambling survey recently showed that despite the dramatic growth in casinos and gaming machines, Lotto remains the gambling pastime most of us choose, with 35% of adults (15+) fluttering every week and spending on average $6.86. More than half a million regularly watch the televised draw and 81% of us can apparently recognise a Lotto theme tune without visual prompting. Even several years after my research into Lotto advertising, I still find the We’re in the money and Saturday is the name of the day jingles regularly bouncing around my anthropological brain.
The same survey showed that Lotto players are typical of New Zealand society:
Comparing 192 lottery providers worldwide, the New Zealand Lotteries Commission (NZLC) ranked 88th in total sales (US$269m in 2000). The Dai-Ichi Kangyo Bank Lottery in Japan topped the lot with US$7,759m. The top Australian lottery was New South Wales’ with total sales of US$517m. In terms of percapita sales Kiwis ranked 82nd with an average individual expenditure of US$70 per annum. This compares with Western Australians who topped the Aussie expenditure at US$133 per annum, and with participants in the Rhode Island Lottery (USA) who ranked as the most profligate in the world at US$879 a year.If you ever wonder how we arrived at such a predicament, simply cast your mind back to July 1987 when six brightly coloured, naturally propelled balls bounced down an isolated country road and across our TV sets. No dialogue was heard, no explanatory narrative was provided. An infant sun rose above a distant, awakening city, while an unseen dog barked at the passing balls. Known in the trade as a teaser, this was the first TV advert for Lotto. Only ten seconds long and seemingly innocuous, it tapped into a host of shared beliefs and values.Firstly, the bouncing balls — which in the Kiwi psyche evoke sentiments of competitive sports such as rugby and cricket — promoted Lotto as a game that was fun and exciting to play. Although subtle, this message was reinforced by text that appeared in a later version of the advertisement: Fun and Fortune are bouncing your way … soon. The balls also appealed to our beliefs about luck, being connected with the idea of ‘the bounce of the ball.’ The ads implied that Lotto was a game based on luck and not skill. It was promoted as the type of game that everyone could take part in on an equal footing — egalitarian gambling for fair-minded Kiwis.
These ads also sold Lotto as a gift from nature to NZers and therefore as innately good. Lotto’s imminent arrival was painted as the triumphal dawn of a better, brighter New Zealand. Other early ads depicted the balls bouncing through a shopping mall and an airport terminal. Lotto — unlike set-apart gambling activities (e.g. TAB betting, see Chapter 8) — was depicted as a normal, everyday consumer activity. As the balls bounced past tired shoppers and world-weary travellers their lives were instantly transformed and they all began jumping up and down with excitement. Clearly Lotto wasn’t just any consumer activity, it magically promoted fun and high-energy entertainment. At the same time a narrator, who was none other than the typical arch-critic of gambling, namely an educated middle-class Pakeha woman, told potential consumers how easy it was to play and how pots of prosperity were only a Lucky Dip away. If this feminine protector of all that is wholesome could endorse Lotto then, like Fresh-Up juice in the morning, it had to be good for you. The ads concluded with a happy Pakeha family (including the obligatory Labrador) huddled together to watch the draw. Suddenly the family erupted as one, hugging each other in joyous celebration of their win. Lotto is not the mere pursuit of money that it appears — it also promotes harmony and goodwill between ages, genders, ethnic groups and even species. These were among the first salvoes in the NZLC’s war to disassociate Lotto from other forms of gambling. Depicted as a simple game, participating in, or rather playing, Lotto was not gambling, but rather gaming. According to the NZLC, Lotto — which involves no skill, all chance, high odds, minimal outlay ($2), no age restriction on playing and no real opportunity for immediate reinvestment of winnings — does not contribute to gambling problems. In contrast, pokies, horse races and black-jack encourage people to re-wager any winnings in the misguided belief that their individual skills will help them beat the odds. According to many psychologists, it is these types of gambling that cause problems and addict punters. Distinguishing the good of gaming from the evil of gambling is something that the NZLC has invested a lot of energy and money in — to the chagrin of other gambling operators who constantly find themselves labelled as depraved. Irrespective of Lotto’s actual effect on problem gambling, many Kiwis have taken this rhetoric to heart and at worst regard Lotto as a benign form of gambling.
Most forms of gambling have always been subject to bad press. They have been accused of encouraging madness, subverting the work ethic, taxing the poor, causing family break-ups and military failure, and even providing a pathological substitute formasturbation (according to Freud, anyway). In New Zealand the first laws against gambling — the 1881 Gaming and Lotteries Act — outlawed all betting and gaming houses, restricted totalisator betting on horse races to on-course only and forbade most lotteries. The Act was part of a concerted effort by the nation’s moralists to assert the protestant work ethic and curb the excesses of male pioneer culture, which commonly included drinking, cursing, singing, illicit sex and gambling. By 1894 the number of horse race meetings had been reduced by one third and in 1907 street bookmaking was declared illegal, together with the advertising of race meetings and the publishing of any tips or dividends. In 1910 all bookmaking was banned and until 1951 there was no legal way to make off-course bets on horse races.
Yet during this time provisions were made for the disposal of certain goods — art works, works of literature, mechanical models and mineral specimens — through lotteries organised by registered, non-profit institutions such as art unions. In 1929 the New Zealand government realised the political and financial rewards that could be gained through lotteries and established its own Art Union lottery that handed out its profits to worthy causes through the Ministry of Internal Affairs. After World War II public interest in the national Art Union lottery waned, yet the demand for lottery profits from bodies as diverse as scientific research institutes and sports clubs continued to grow. In response to this demand and the influence of overseas lotteries, the government introduced the Golden Kiwi lottery in 1961, which offered larger prizes and more frequent draws. Golden Kiwi was an instant hit, though its star also eventually faded and it was abandoned in 1989 to be replaced by an even more dazzling array of state-sponsored gambling including Lotto (1987), Instant Kiwi (1989), Daily Keno (1994), Telebingo (1996–2001), Risk (2001) and PowerBall (2001). By the time Lotto was introduced the die was cast and most of us saw state-run or sponsored lotteries as integral to the Kiwi way of life.
About ten years after Lotto began we witnessed the moving early-morning opening of the national museum, Te Papa. It was proclaimed by commentators as a watershed in the development of a mature national identity and the élite of our society assembled to pay homage. Sir Peter Blake, the much-admired winner of the America’s Cup in 1995, officially opened the museum. Standing proud amid this glittering array of the nation’s finest was Lotto in the form of a live Superdraw held in the museum foyer. As Lotto money had helped fund Te Papa and Blake’s America’s Cup campaign the message was clear: Lotto was one of New Zealand’s many treasures. What’s more, Lotto had the figures on board to back up such a claim: its first year generated a total income of $143 million. By 1997 this had ballooned to $394 million — an increase of 275%, which prompted the NZLC to proudly announce that of the Top 200 New Zealand companies: “The commission is easily the country’s most profitable operator in the commercial sector,” being ranked 9th for after-tax profits and 30th for total turnover.
Few people are immune from Lotto’s influence. Aside from the millions of participants, the televised draw and advertising,a veritable ‘who-wants-what’ of worthy community groups get, and in many cases rely on, funding from Lotto profits. By 1997 the NZLC had paid $1 billion to the Lottery Grants Board for charitable dispersal.
So Lotto is not simply a game — it is THE GAME. To an anthropologist this raises the question why? Several surveys report that the overwhelming majority — more than 80% — of Lotto regulars do so to win money. Butthe same surveys do not ask which money. Given that many older Kiwis dislike million dollar prizes going to only one individual, we cannot simply presume that the most desired prize is the first division. Indeed, on average only 3% of prizes are left unclaimed each year, which tends to suggest thateach year, which tends to suggest that players desire all Lotto money no matter what the denomination. However, by the end of 2001 there was some $10 million in unclaimed Lotto winnings, of which only three first division prizes accounted for nearly $5 million. The rest was largely made up of thousands of unclaimed fourth/fifth division prizes. This suggests these smaller prizes are of lesser, or even no importance, to many Kiwis. So when you ask someone why they play Lotto and they respond: “You have to be in to win!” you can, with some reservations, assume they mean ‘to win’ Lotto's first prize. The lure of a large sum for a relatively small outlay is clearly appealing. Yet the astronomical odds of winning the first division pre-ordain that for most the Lotto experience will be one of repeated loss. The basic logic of profit means that for every Lotto millionaire there are millions more losers. As the NZLC only pays back about 55% in prize money, the most any player can reasonably expect is to lose 45c for every dollar they invest.
Is this reasonable? Well, yes and no. Obviously the ‘in-to-win’ motto has merit — if you are not in you are never going to win.But most people tend to overestimate their chances of winning. This is partly due to New Zealand’s small population, where there are only a few degrees of separation from someone who knows someone who has won Lotto. More to the point, most of us are totally ignorant of the odds of winning the first division prize. The first division odds are 1 in 3,838,380 — considerably worse than picking a winner in the Melbourne Cup (1 in 24) or of being injured while flying with the world’s safest airline, Canada Air (1 in 1.3 million). These astronomical odds are beyond our everyday comprehension. What these actually mean is that if you spent $5 a week on Lotto for 60 years (total expenditure $15,600), taking care to select different numbers every time, you will only ever buy 0.823% or 31,200 of all the possible 3.8 million combinations. To calculate the odds of winning Lotto PowerBall, simply multiply these figures by eight!
Now, I’ve done the sums and I know the odds yet most weeksI — like hundreds of thousands of other Kiwis — buy a Lotto ticket. So if most of us who play are ‘in-to-win,’ yet winning is stubbornly elusive, what exactly are we winning that keeps us in? Aside from keeping our dreams of winning alive, participating in Lotto also provides other fulfilments that can help maintain our interest. High among these are the small wins, the second and lower division prizes. Winning such a prize can create a sense of financial gain, but more importantly it promotes ideas of luck. Many players who win a lower division prize believe that their luck is in, that they are on a roll. I’ve met people who have worn the same socks or repeated the same ticket-buying rituals in the hope of retaining — or even enhancing — their luck for the next week’s draw. As expected, their efforts came to nothing as Lotto numbers are drawn according to pure, random chance. Belief in luck is pervasive in our culture and the NZLC advances such notions when they promote ‘lucky number boards’ in Lotto outlets and ‘lucky Lotto shops’ such as the Peter Dunkerley Chemist in Hastings. Many punters have lucky numbers they use every week for their self-selected tickets, which account for some 30% of tickets sold. This strategy can lead to what psychologists call ‘entrapment’ — a state where, because of your long-term investment in the same numbers, you become afraid of missing a draw in case those numbers come up. With typical marketers’ cheek, this apparently harmful state of affairs is now used to promote Lotto under the banner Never miss a week. Never miss a draw — with ads showing hapless saps humiliated for forgetting to buy their ticket.
Often lucky numbers are the birthdates of family members and loved ones. In selecting these a player may recreate a unique sense of self. I used to think I was the only person who chose ‘1,2,3,4,5,7’ when playing Lotto. I thought most people would not choose sequential numbers in the erroneous belief that ‘spread-out’ numbers had more chance of winning. Just in case someone did, I included the ‘5-7’ hiccup. When I told this to a NZLC rep she smiled kindly and then dispelled my illusion of individualistic grandeur, explaining that they got dozens of entries like it every week. In everyday life we are encouraged to create a distinct expression of self through acts of public consumption. Lotto, however, is not open to the same public scrutiny or censure that other forms of conspicuous behaviour may attract (e.g. eating with your mouth open). The shared acts and beliefs of most Lotto players are hidden from one another. Thousands watch the live draw on a Saturday night and most suffer the same let-down — week in, week out. Alone with their shattered dreams, the most obvious response for the frustrated player is not to engage in a structural analysis of the lottery, but simply to conclude that it simply wasn’t their lucky week.
Lotto has other paybacks, too. For some isolated elderly people, buying a ticket allows them to enjoy social contact with Lotto retailers. For others it’s a way to contribute to worthy causes. This is especially true for women, who make up 51% of Lotto players (a very high proportion for gambling activities, which are generally dominated by males). Although Lotto philanthropy appears to be based on individual ‘greed’ ratherthan social altruism, many of us consider that playing Lotto is comparable with buying a ticket in a community raffle to show support for the local school or scout group. Yet with Lotto’s charity the community that benefits is New Zealand society at large, and therein lies the rub.
As an extremely popular and fun activity — renowned for supporting good causes and widely seen as divorced from pathological gambling — Lotto potentially reveals what types of gambling are seen as ideal or positive in our culture. But Lotto is also a state-sanctioned activity. The New Zealand government is a major stakeholder in Lotto, having passed the 1977 Gaming and Lotteries Act which established the NZLC. Besides collecting taxes from sales, the state was directly represented on the NZLC board until 1999 by the Secretary of Internal Affairs, and the board still reports to the Minister. The Department of Internal Affairs also provides the policy and logistic support for the New Zealand Lottery Grants Board. What political agendas, then, may be served by Lotto’s continued success?
Think for a moment about the TV ads on the theme of Saturday is the name of the day and Lotto is the name of our game. They depicted numerous characters — typical New Zealanders and home-grown celebrities — in an array of activities commonly linked with the Kiwi Saturday, from swimming, playing golf and BBQs to getting married. All the activities featured characters buying a Lotto ticket and concluded with diverse groups gathering to watch the live draw. The draw itself was not shown, nor was anybody winning. Unlike earlier commercials that promoted winning as the prime reason for involvement, these later ads implied that merely playingLotto was its own reward. In one, entertainer Howard Morrison happily stuck his losing ticket on his forehead, letting it blow away in the wind and cricketer Jeremy Coney laughingly ate his losing ticket after enjoying a round of golf. The ads sought to align Lotto with Saturday — an iconic day in our Good Life psyche, filled with sun-drenched leisure by beach, lake or river and populated with varied, creative individuals playing in a dynamic state of egalitarian harmony and social goodwill. The ads depicted Lotto as the enabling ritual of the Good Life and the simple purchase of a Lucky Dip affirmed an individual’s membership in the Good Life club. All Lotto players are by definition good Kiwis, just as all good Kiwis play Lotto. Although winning Lotto may secure you a bigger slice of the Good Life pie, it is our unadulterated commitment to playing THE GAME — to being a good Kiwi — that really counts!
Lotto’s variant, PowerBall, hits all these spots. Firstly, it was promoted through the series of ‘Count me in’ advertisements. These emphasised that in playing PowerBall you were validating your membership in the fun-loving, perpetually sunny and ever-harmonious society of Kiwidom. PowerBall also offers a potential life-changing prize — many millions in fact. Yet a cunning twist of structural logistics, namely the synthesis of the huge odds against winning and the automatic PowerBall jackpot after reaching $30 million, means that the first prize is usually shared between the multiple winners of lower divisions. In April 2001 the $9.9 million PowerBall prize was not struck by any ticket in the first or second divisions and was shared among 78 winners of the third division, who each got $127,907. This structure ensures that the potential vastness of PowerBall first-division prize never completely overwhelms. At a certain level it supports the ethos of egalitarianism while at the same time promoting the middle-class tenet of personal advancement. Though many older Kiwis would beuncomfortable if individuals repeatedly won millions in PowerBall, they positively dance in the streets if twenty or more people each win $500,000.
Many New Zealanders share the belief that Lotto is a game for ordinary Kiwis. They think that individuals like BobJones and other wealthy people should not be allowed to play. Neither, do they think, should anyone who has previously won Lotto, unless of course they are willing to give their ‘extra’ winnings to charity. One elderly woman tried to return her share of the first division as she felt that winning had morally excluded her from further involvement and that this effectively ruled out her weekly visit to the local Lotto shop. Similarly the fantasies of many players centre on simply securing what they already own or can reasonably expect to aspire to in their lifetimes (e.g. paying off the mortgage, buying a new boat). In this respect Lotto is thought of as the ordinary Kiwi’s chance to secure — but not necessarily transcend — their personal piece of the Good Life paradise. Advertisers have been quick to idealise this egalitarian ethos and even depict winners as simple, quirky folk. Remember the chubby lawnmower rider, the lithe dolphin-swimmer and, most charmingly, the young hipsters who spurn café society to give their winnings to worthy rural charities? No fast-cars or champagne for our spontaneously wealthy winners. Flamboyant big-noting is simply not part of our ideal cultural heritage.
Lotto is plainly being used to promote utopian ideals of nationhood. The parallels between its rhetoric and the idealistic statements about New Zealand society so beloved of post-war politicians are quite startling. Ultimately it is a case of buy a Lucky Dip and help maintain New Zealand as a truly caring, sharing, dynamic and sun-drenched society. But our beloved lottery is much more than simply a local phenomenon, it is also part of a rapidly expanding global gambling industry. Indeed, a current trend in anthropology looks at links between seemingly insignificant, everyday and home-based occurrences and the much broader structures of world economics and politics. This reflects the increasingly global influences in our lives. When the price of milk on international markets is up — and local farmers are getting a better deal offshore — there is a corresponding domestic price rise.
Thus, Lotto is not simply filling the mythical void left by thedemise of one-nation, one-people politics; it also works to serve the interests of transnational economics. Many of us are unaware that Lotto is only one of many state-sponsored lotteries that support a burgeoning global industry of lottery providers that was worth US$128,139 million in year 2000. GTECH provided lottery computer technology in New Zealand and in at least 26 American, four Australian and three Canadian states; 23 European, three Asian, five South American, three African and five Caribbean countries, as well as in Mexico and Israel. Meanwhile, advertising moguls Saatchi & Saatchi were the creative genius behind lottery advertising in America, Australia, Great Britain and New Zealand. Armed with such knowledge it may also be judicious to ask how Lotto works in the interests of transnational companies, beyond their obvious pursuit of profit.
These companies rely on the quick movement of people, knowledge and capital across state boundaries. Their financial interests may conflict with the more geographically bound or territorial concerns of the nation-state. This potential for conflict is not glib scaremongering. Of the world’s top 100 economies, 51 are transnationals, while only 49 are actual countries. Taking the top 20 economies in year 2000, nine were transnationals, the highest-ranking being General Motors at number eight. Unsurprisingly the good ol’ USA was numero uno. The 12th largest economy was Wal-Mart, which generated an annual revenue greater than that of 161 countries including New Zealand, Israel, Poland and Greece. The cigarette manufacturer Philip Morris, which operates in 170 countries but does not even rank in the top 100 companies, is itself economically bigger than New Zealand. The combined sales of the world’s top 200 corporations accounted for more than a quarter of the world’s economic activity, and with more than 40,000 of them worldwide the balance of economic-political power appears to be inevitably shifting in their favour. Yet in Lotto we glimpse how nation-states and transnational corporations can resolve their potential conflicts and work together to support each other’s ideals.
Firstly, transnationals have actively negotiated key alliances with different countries to ensure that their combined activities create a compliant labour force and stimulate wealth through increased consumer activity. Since Lotto was introduced we have experienced:
Secondly, transnationals have advanced nationalist sentiments through the localised branding of their products. Remember the Japanese car manufacturer, Toyota, and their ‘Welcome to my world’ and ‘Everyday People’ advertising campaigns? These featured sublime local landscapes and a colourful cast of Kiwicharacters — including the Asian market gardener who pronounces at the end “Every day I think this is a gwate [sic] place … yeah.” Now in 2004 it’s the turn of the overseas-owned ANZ bank to claim they’re us. They are, of course, but not simply in the way they portray in their televisions ads. Yes, they are NewZealand’s first commercial bank, and yes they are staffed by a diverse group of ‘Kiwis’, but their foreign owners are just as much a part of our culture as the soap opera Shortland Street. Cultures are not fixed in time or place and ANZ, like Dr Ropata, exist on both sides of the Tasman and elsewhere.
The social and financial ideals of transnationalism — where every citizen has the ordained right to aspire to the American Dream — have come under fire as repeated cycles of economic boom’n’bust have proven that hard work, prudent investment and wise spending are not necessarily enough to guarantee individual success. Transnational companies have responded by actually celebrating the unpredictability of economic and social environments. Although they have counselled us to strive for a better life, they have also recognised that many factors beyond our control can dramatically change our circumstances. For example, house and contents insurance premiums in New Zealand can rise due to damage caused by tornados across North America and the losses sustained by global insurance companies. So transnationals — and many nation-states, as evidenced by the growing number of state-operated or sponsored lotteries around the world (195 at last count) — have promoted risk-taking and luck as ideals. Which may explain why the sight of middle-aged, middle-class males — concerned about losing their edge in business and between the sheets — cavorting around the countryside bungy-jumping, tandem skydiving and paragliding is now quite common. Many of us now believe that the gap between our present circumstances and future prosperity will not necessarily be achieved by sober, hard grind but rather will be made in a single lucky leap. Hence the great weight we attach to risk-taking and the need for luck … and the widespread popularity of lotteries.
As Lotto ‘play’ is mainly an experience of repeated loss, players are conversely taught to be happy with their current lot in life, but also to keep taking risks in the hope of achieving a better future. Playing Lotto disciplines Kiwis to remain committed to the Game of Life — win, lose or draw. The unpredictability of success or failure in such a game of chance also advances the idea that our fate chiefly depends on luck. In a parallel situation a racehorse in Japan, Haru-urara, became a national hero after losing 100 consecutive races. The Japanese prime minister declared “It’s a nice story that gives people hope that they shouldn’t give up even if they lose.” Ardent fans punt on the horse knowing it will lose, then keep the dud tickets as good luck charms.
Lotto’s moral message places the burden of success squarely on the individual and thereby deflects focus away from the fact that Lotto — like life generally today — is structured to ensure there will be more losers than winners. Lotto promotes an atmosphere in which many of us believe a better life is only six numbers away and where critical analysis of the social, economic and political inequities that basically predetermine our lot is to be avoided. Any negative feelings we may have about consistently losing are diluted by the celebration of the Kiwi Good Life as an ideal and of the game’s total outputs — dynamic players, lucky winners and an altruistic society.
In many respects Lotto is reminiscent of the Melanesian cargo cults which proliferated after World War II in response to colonial rule and oppression. They have been maintained ever since by devotees convinced that if they perform the ‘rituals’ of wartime Europeans — such as marching in straight lines — boatloads of cargo (e.g. tinned foodstuffs) will magically appear and they will forever be freed from hard toil. When the cargo doesn’t arrive the cultists do not ditch their core beliefs, they just change their leaders or rituals, in much the same way that unlucky players may change their numbers. Cargo cults, like Lotto, promise a future Golden Age whilst conferring culturally appropriate meaning and value to current hard times. And with few of us having rich, near-death relatives and money trees long since proven to be fictitious, subscribing to the cargo cult of Lotto is one way of maintaining our dream of the Good Life. Although if you happen to spot a Dani from Irian Jaya wandering around the Remuera shopping precinct flashing a gold Amex and sporting a rather splendid gold-plated penis sheath, then the illusions of Lotto and the cargo cult may have converged into reality for at least one lucky individual.
In November 2002 the Lotteries Commission introduced a new prize structure to Lotto — the Guaranteed Millionaire. This was in response to the fall in profits that had troubled the NZLC since 1998. Under this new regime if there is only one first division winner they automatically win a million dollars. However, if there are more than one — or indeed no first division winners — an additional draw is held to select a Guaranteed Millionaire. The commission also introduced an additional winning bonus number, thereby increasing the chances of winning a lower division prize. This initiative has been reinforced by one-off draws for Holden Monaro and VW Beetle cars won by random ticket holders.
At the same time Lotto’s advertising increasingly focused on the joys of winning this sure-fire prize. Under the general banner of Lotto — Anything’s Possible, newspaper, radio and television ads make a big play of the certain million-dollar prize: “Imagine the chance to be a millionaire every week! As easy as Lotto.” However, similar motifs are still employed — especially those that stress how Lotto can save people from the grind of everyday life, liberating them to bask in the perpetual warmth of the New Zealand Good Life.
In an animated television ad a small, unhappy cog in a large, dark factory is shown breaking free from its mechanical torture and scampering away to the idyllic freedom of the countryside. Here it is welcomed by cheerful daffodils which — in rotating motions that mimic the cog’s previous entrapment — wipe away the grime that coats its body. It is thus returned to its original golden lustre, which brilliantly reflects the dazzling sunshine in which it now bathes. Then the little cog — emancipated from all traces of work-related tyranny — hops aboard a sailboat and uses its innate talents to start the rack and pinion system that sets the boat’s sail. This completed, it takes charge of the wheel to set a course towards a setting (or rising?) sun, which has the lines A millionaire every week. What would you do? written underneath. All this is underscored by Vera Lynn’s wartime hit ‘Wish me luck as you wave me goodbye’ — a touching song that conveyed the departing soldiers’ heartfelt desire for upbeat support as they left to confront the horrors of war. In the Lotto ad, however, the situation is reversed as the lucky cog asks those left behind in the trenches of everyday drudgery to wish it luck as it determinedly escapes to the land of Lotto/ Godzone idealism. This new promotional emphasis — backed by the sure-fire reality of one lucky cog per week — may be working. In the last quarter (April–June) of the 2002–2003 financial year Lotto earnings jumped $14.4m from the previous quarter, although whether this will mark a long-term change in Lotto’s fortunes remains to be seen. Don’t be surprised if the NZLC starts up a ‘Lotto millionaires club’ before too long — where hopefully we’ll meet again.