The most famous world lotteries are based on picking numbers. It’s one of the easiest things to guess at, needing no special knowledge. So long as you can count from 1 to around 50 or 60, depending on the game, you can play the lottery. A new lottery in Australia is hoping to shake up the old format and provide players with a chance to win $1m AUD (£540,000 approx) by correctly guessing the temperature in 7 key cities. Australia’s Weather Lottery started on Friday 8th April.
Welcome to Australia’s Weather Lottery
The premise of Weather Lottery is simple though it may seem confusing at first – simply choose seven numbers based on the celsius temperature, but list only the fraction of a degree. So, if you think the temperature in Sydney will be 29.8C, you will choose the number 8 for that city. Then move on to the next one. Your ticket string could easily read 6, 6, 7, 4, 9, 6, 6. That is an unusual format, but organisers say players will get used to it as it is similar to the postcode lotteries in other countries (which don’t work down under because their postcode strings are so short and not particularly specific).
The best thing about Australia’s Weather Lottery is that all of the profits will go to charity. The second best thing is that if you correctly guess the sequence, you keep all of the $1m AUD prize as each number string is unique to one player. No two players can have the same numbers in the same order. There are smaller prizes too; players can win for matching as few as two numbers as opposed to Australia’s regular lottery that requires a minimum of three matching numbers. There is a daily draw; players pay a $25 monthly fee and choose which day of the week they play – based solely on their preferred charity.