Powerball began as the Lotto America in 1986. At the time you could purchase two lines per ticket for a $1.00.
Then in the 1990's Virginia had a $300,000,000 + lotto.
An Australian syndicate pulled resources together and sent their agents all over the state buying up thousands of tickets and won the big prize.
This alarmed Lotto America because the odds were such that a run like this would guarantee that such a syndicate could always win.
So Lotto America became Powerball and added the Powerball number as a separate pick which raised the odds to something like 1 in 187 million.
Then, not content to be making enough with the Powerball moved to charging $2.00 per line ( 1 ticket).
Still getting even greedy as government people do with taxes and in conjunction with the private company that runs Powerball added additional numbers to the Powerball section intentionally to raise the prize to mega amounts to create lotto-mania and increase receipts.
So this the Lotto company and state governments gain on the combination of receipts and taxes and they put Bernie Madoff in jail
