It could therefore be possible to develop pool betting into a unique product for lotteries – a kind of sports jackpot game, where customers' primary motivation for playing is the opportunity to win a lot of money from a small bet.
From the lottery's point of view, it is a positive that large winnings do not raise the prospect of financial risk, as big fixed-odds wins would. In addition, the payout percentages of football pools, or similar games, are much lower than for fixed-odds betting.
Yet most lotteries currently offering sports betting use fixed odds. The competition in this area is particularly fierce – there are thousands of competitors doing the same.
The profit margins for fixed odds are small and there are plenty of profit seekers. Gambling companies offer the same matches and markets and the number of betting events has grown exponentially in recent years.
In the past, there were only a few betting options available for a single match, but nowadays you can bet on hundreds of different outcomes within one match.
All this has not significantly increased revenue from fixed-odds betting. In addition, the large number of betting opportunities often makes betting too complicated for the average sports fan.
Active bettors are a different matter, but their number is relatively small compared to the lotteries' customer base.
One option for lotteries could be to innovate with a simplified fixed-odds offering, one that could be easily understood by an ordinary lottery consumer with an interest in sports.
Successful products, it should be noted, tend to be the ones that are the simplest to use. Lotteries could whittle down the markets to the most significant sporting events each day, from which only a couple of betting markets would be made available.