Life won't be a such a dream if you win big in lotto. Instead you might end up isolated and worse off, a Victorian expert says.
This might be the reason why a $55 million Powerball division one winner took almost six months to claim the prize, Monash Business School head of the marketing Harmen Oppewal told AAP.
"One possible explanation they may not have come forward is it is very disruptive and changes people's lives dramatically," Professor Oppewal told AAP.
"You can spend money on what you could never have spent money on. People often distance themselves from their peers and family and there's an expectation they help others.
"It can create a big gap which is not quite enjoyable."
He suspects the winner may have been fearful about the consequences of such a large win or perhaps they were seeking financial advice before coming forward with the ticket on Wednesday.
But who the mystery winner is, or what they will do with money, will remain a secret as they've chosen to remain anonymous.
Professor Oppewal said it was better if a group of people shared in the jackpot as the flow-on effects were not as dramatic on people's lives.
"There is a lot of excitement about the possibility of how you would spend it and the possibility of how life would be. It is half the game, if not more," he said on Friday.
"A lot of people would buy a ticket just in case. Statistically, that is nonsense."
The chance of winning Powerball with one standard game is 134,490,400 to one.
Monash University School of Mathematical Sciences senior lecturer Gregory Markowsky said there was no magical equation to win big or any way to beat the system.
"To put the win into perspective, the average life is 30,000 days and if you played every day, you'd win every one in 3000 lifetimes," he said.
"It is so unlikely to win, I don't think people should even bother."
Many Powerball winners purchase more than one standard game with the average choice being a 12-game QuickPick which changes the odds to 11,207,616 to one, according to The Lott's Bronnie Spencer.
There were 18 Powerball division one winning entries worth more than $240 million across The Lott's jurisdictions last financial year, she said.
Australian Associated Press
