Majority of Irish adults expected to play Lotto
Lottery fever sweeping the country has smashed all records with two-thirds of the adult population expected to play for this weekend's biggest ever jackpot, organisers said today.
The massive €16m top prize could even out-sell the staggering two million tickets sold for the mid-week draw - the highest sales in the game's 20-year history.
And as the roll-over continues, Lotto chiefs are urging the public to play early to avoid huge crowds building up at shops throughout the country in the hours leading up to Saturday evening's draw.
Paula McEvoy, of the National Lottery, said the unrivalled levels of interest were making it difficult to forecast just how many people could be looking to buy tickets for the latest draw, which has not been won for more than five weeks.
"We can't really make a forecast on it yet. We're almost in uncharted territory now with this jackpot," she said.
"It's breaking records in all senses at this point. Record sales, record rollovers, record jackpot, record number of people playing. Everything is broken at this point."
Fortunately for players and the organisers one thing that has not been broken is the state-wide Lotto computer system which has so far managed not to buckle under the pressure.
Crashes in Donegal, Roscommon and Mayo before Wednesday's draw are believed to have been the result of a fibre-optic cable being slashed during works in the north-west.
"It wasn't a problem that emanated with our system," insisted Ms McEvoy.
"The system is fine and it's more than adequate to cope with numbers like this. Obviously it's the first time we've had these numbers because of the record roll-over but the system is coping extremely well.
"There has been no down time and no outages so far. We're very confident that will continue on."
The record number of tickets sold for the last draw amounted to almost two-thirds of the adult population and that could be eclipsed at the weekend.
And with around 5,500 tickets being bought every minute between 6pm and 7.45pm lottery bosses are keen that people spread out the pressure for agents and the system.
"We are appealing to people for Saturday night's draw to please try to play outside those times because the queues could be phenomenal and it may reach the stage were the draw closes and you don't have a ticket," Ms McEvoy said.
National Lottery sales teams are advising their agents at shops across the country about how to best manage the expected crowds.
The frenzy has thrown up some unusual patterns in the numbers that players are picking with the most popular by far in the latest draw being 1,2,3,4,5 and 6.
More than 1,000 people chose the first six numbers on the card while the second most popular choice was 5,10,15,20,25 and 30.
Although the combinations should, in theory, have as much chance as any other random six numbers there is a greater chance of having to split your winnings - with as many as 1,000 other lucky winners.
There were two winners of the Lotto Plus 2 draw on Wednesday with each able to claim jackpots of €250,000. The winning tickets were bought in Newbridge, Co Kildare and Rathkeale, Co Limerick.
The highest jackpot so far this year was on January 31 when a Kilkenny couple won more than €8.5m after buying a three euro Quickpick ticket.
The previous highest lotto jackpot was for €9.5m and was shared on November 21 1996, by two tickets.
