lottery<\/a> game.\u00a0<\/p>\nMillionaire for Life, a draw game, is best known for its top prize of $1 million a year for life, along with its second-prize offering of $100,000 a year for the same duration.\u00a0<\/p>\n
While the proposal leaves the top prize unchanged, it alters the conditions under which players can access the second-prize annuity that has become a defining feature of the game, according to a proposed rule published by the Department of State on Wednesday.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Under the proposed changes, second-prize winners would only qualify for the $100,000 annuity if there are seven or fewer runner-up-prize-winning tickets sold across all participating lottery jurisdictions.<\/p>\n
Right now, that threshold is 20 winners.\u00a0<\/p>\n
There are a host of other changes proposed to the Millionaire for Life game, which is coordinated through the Multi-State Lottery Association that also operates Powerball.\u00a0<\/p>\n
If adopted, the changes would go into effect in September and would reduce the circumstances under which players could receive the lifetime annuity prize.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Under the current rules, the annual-for-life payment is available unless 21 or more players win the second-prize tier. The proposed framework says that the annuity option would disappear entirely once the number of second-prize winners reaches eight.<\/p>\n
The total second-prize liability under those higher-winner scenarios would be capped and divided equally among all winning tickets. Winners would receive a single lump-sum payment instead of annual lifetime installments.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Gaming Commission said in regulatory filings that the changes are necessary because the Multi-State Lottery Association amended the game\u2019s operating rules and participating lotteries must adopt those changes if they want to continue offering the game.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“The alternative to this amendment is to cease participation in this multi-jurisdiction game,” state officials said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The commission rejected the option of dropping the game, which made its New York debut in February, because of its contribution to lottery revenues that support education funding.<\/p>\n
Other rule changes include safeguards meant to prevent unusually small payouts. For example, if multiple winners are required to split a capped prize pool, no second-prize winner could receive less than the value of a lower-tier prize available in the same drawing.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Additionally, lump-sum second-prize awards would be rounded down to the nearest whole dollar.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ALBANY \u2014 A key prize in New York\u2019s Millionaire for Life game could become far harder to win.\u00a0…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":263304,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[98,100,99,844,9,24,63,530],"class_list":["post-263303","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn-headlines","tag-brooklyn-news","tag-latestnews","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-state"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263303","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=263303"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263303\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/263304"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=263303"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=263303"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=263303"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}