Comments by "SmallSpoonBrigade" (@SmallSpoonBrigade) on "State Lottery Doesn’t Want to Pay $83.5M Prize on Ticket Bought w/App" video.

I suspect that the reason that phone purchases were banned was that it allowed for people to steal the winning tickets, there wasn't any way of guaranteeing that the winner was the person paying and there were all sorts of opportunities for things like buying the same numbers to get half of the proceeds.
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The state lotteries siphon money out every time they run one. And, various authorities tax the winners. I'm guessing the issues is what others are pointing at that after a certain point, you can buy every single ticket and even after paying taxes you've got more money than you put into it. Which results in the pots hitting a natural limit somewhere just north of where the tickets times the odds of winning the jackpot.
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@Vincent_Beers WIth progressive jackpots they do eventually get high enough to be able to ensure that you win more than you spend. At least if the logistics of buying every single ticket once and you're lucky enough to not have to share. IT's extremely hard, but doable. It's part of why paramutual betting was invented. It greatly reduces the incentive to just buy all of the possible tickets as the payout for each possibility changes depending upon the bets. I'm not sure what it's used for other than horse racing though.
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@Deploracle IIRC, they changed the winning conditions on megamillions not that long ago and now they're increasing the price to play. The result will likely be more pots that hit $1bn and people going nuts over it. Although, if people are able to just buy all of the possible tickets, that would cut into that a lot.
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