A few state lotteries run raffles once or twice a year.  It’s pretty simple: you buy a numbered ticket; if your number matches the number the lottery picks from all the numbered tickets that were sold, you win.  Typically the price of a ticket is either $10 or $20 and the top prize is between $100,000 to $1,000,000.

Right now, only two state lotteries are running raffles: Michigan (Red Hot Raffle) and North Carolina (Millionaire Raffle).  Are these two raffles a good deal for the player?  In other words, are there other games within each state lottery that have better odds of winning the same prize?

Let’s start with Michigan.  A Red Hot Raffle ticket costs $10, the top prize is $100,000 and the odds of winning are 1:50,000.  A comparable game in Michigan is Fantasy 5 which costs $1, has a starting jackpot of $100,000 and 1:575,757 winning odds.

If you were to buy ten $1 Fantasy 5 tickets, your odds would be 1:57,576.  Normally, Fantasy 5 has the best odds to win $100,000.  In this case Red Hot Raffle technically has better odds.  However, most of the time, the Fantasy 5 jackpot is quite a bit higher, in which case you’re better off getting a Fantasy 5 ticket.  The downside is that if someone else has the same winning numbers, you’re going to be sharing the jackpot, unlike in a Raffle, where you’re guaranteed to keep the whole prize.

North Carolina’s Millionaire Raffle costs $20, has a top prize of $1 million (with taxes paid, so the actual value is $1,470,579) and 1:166,667 winning odds.  There are 3 other games in the NC Lottery that have a $1 million prize: Mega Millions w/ Megaplier, Powerball with Power Play, and the $200 Million Extravaganza Instant Scratch Off game.

Applying the same type of calculation as we did for Michigan, in this case we have a clear winner: the Millionaire Raffle. Not only does it have much better odds of winning (about 3 times better than Powerball), it also has a better prize: $1 million with taxes paid.  The only downside is you have to spend $20 to get a chance to win.