Reports suggest that bankers in the nine participating countries have started to buy tickets in bulk to cover more of the possible combinations, with sales estimated to have grown by 48 percent in the two postcodes corresponding to the financial hotbeds of the City of London and Canary Wharf in the UK. This is twice the rate of sales across the rest of the country.
Peter Wagg, the owner of the News of the Wharf shop at Canary Wharf, told the Financial Times: “Whenever the jackpot gets above £70m to £80m, that’s when we have to think about a range of additional staff [to] cover the store. This is not the first mega lottery draw we’ve had. In the past, we’ve actually had to have security to organise a queuing system because the lines have gone out of the door.”
The interest is rising rapidly across the rest of Europe too. Miro Svdoda, the manager of the Spar on George’s Dock in Dublin’s International Financial Services Centre, has revealed that ticket sales have increased by 50 percent over the last three weeks. Quoted by Dublin Live, he said: “Many of them get together and play in syndicates. There is huge excitement here with the jackpot at its highest level this year.”
As more players take part and more combinations are covered, it makes it more likely that the EuroMillions jackpot will be won. Participants throughout Europe will be starting to dream about what they might do with such a vast fortune, and either picking up tickets from authorised retailers or choosing numbers online to give themselves a chance of winning.
