Editorial: Lotto chance would be a fine thing

Lotto's marketing folk are a crafty lot.

For years they've been asking, "What would you do?" And of late, they've invited us to "Imagine".

Imagining is a luxury - but it's fun. After all, what would you do?

This Wednesday Lotto's Powerball surges to $24 million.

For most of us, what we'd do is an impossible question, as we have no idea what that sort of capital buys.

In October last year, a landmark Herne Bay home sold for $24 million - at the time the most expensive house sale of the year, and all without an official real estate listing.

Last year in March, investors were asked to pay $24 million for 1 per cent of the New York Yankees baseball team.

And in May this year, the Los Angeles Times reported that special interest groups had already forked out $24 million in the lead-up to the United States elections.

It would also buy four Steve Austins (The Six Million Dollar Man, times four).

Dare I raise it again, but it'd constitute a deposit on another New Zealand flag referendum.

But those four examples are perhaps of little use to those of us in real terms.

So, I've discovered a more enlightening view of winning $24 million.

The Welsh are paying $9 to beat the All Blacks this weekend, hence if you placed $2,666,666 on the Dragons, and they pulled off the impossible, you'd win $24 million.

Maybe that rather unlikely likelihood best illustrates the odds of winning Lotto.