A new multi-state lottery game with the colorful name “Monopoly Millionaires Club” started selling tickets this week in 22 states, plus Washington D.C., and the first drawing for the new lottery is Friday, October 24. But unlike Mega Millions and Powerball, both of which are pretty straightforward and simple games to play, Monopoly Millionaires Club takes some explaining.
Well, a lot of explaining.
So before you lay down $5 for a single ticket, here are some basics of Monopoly Millionaires Club. Are you ready? Because you might need to take notes.
First of all, yes, you read that correctly. A single ticket will set you back five bucks, compared to a single dollar for Mega Millions and two for a Powerball ticket. But despite the higher ticket price the top jackpot prize is capped at $25 million. By comparison, going into Friday and Saturday’s drawings, respectively, Mega Millions offers a $224 million jackpot while the Powerball prize stands at $125 million.
On the other hand, the chances of hitting that jackpot are “only” about 73 million to one, compared to approximately 259 million to one for Mega Millions and 175 million to one in Powerball.
But the new lottery game makes up for the lower jackpot by offering a better chance at a $1 million second prize. However, the $1 million prizes are not selected based on the Monopoly Millionaires Club numbers you picked, but on an entirely different set of numbers that appear on your ticket under the heading “Millionaires Club Number.”
So, match that second number and win a million — simple, right? Not so fast.
The only time Monopoly Millionaires Club gives away those million dollar prizes is when someone hits the jackpot — unlike in the other multi-state lottery games, which can give away their $1 million second-prizes any time.
The good news is that Monopoly Millionaires Club will give away more million-dollar prizes at once than the other lottery games. When someone hits the maximum $25 million jackpot, 16 other lucky players whose “Millionaires Club Numbers” are randomly selected will win $1 million each.
When someone wins the minimum $15 million, 10 other players will take home $1 million.
Sound complicated? Sure — but that’s the simple part.
There’s another number on your Monopoly Millionaires Club tickets — a single digit called the “property number,” that corresponds to a “property” on the Monopoly board. So if you want to play this new lottery, you’d better pull your old Monopoly set out of the closet.
When you collect all of the Monopoly “properties,” you become eligible for a five day, four night vacation in Las Vegas. The key word is “eligible,” because players first need to go online and enter yet another number, the “Entry Webcode.”
You then become eligible for the Vegas vacation. But there’s a catch to the vacation. While you’re in Vegas, you’ll be part of a Monopoly Millionaires Club TV show. But that’s another story.
Finally, you’d better live in Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Tennessee, or Texas.
Those are the only states where tickets for this brain-twisting new lottery games are sold.
