the Irish Lottery redux

I’ve got a crazy idea. This one’s been hanging around since university.  It’s my world lottery idea.  Think of it as the Irish Sweepstakes but on a global scale. Ok I know that the fact I know about the Irish Sweepstakes means it’s already on a global scale or I watched to much 70’s TV where it was used in a bunch of running gags.  The original part of the scheme is the scale of the idea.

The idea goes like this – call it a 50/50 lottery. Fifty percent of the take goes to the winner, the other fifty percent goes to charity ( minus a small administration fee ).  No seriously it would be small – less than 1%.  It is all done through the Internet, back during my university days my roommate and I couldn’t figure out how to market it internationally.  People buy their tickets online and redeem them online. Hence it’s the World Lottery.  (Maybe the World Wide Wottery???  I know, I know… horrible)

Being on the Internet means this idea has the same issues as online gambling – it’s illegal in this country. Which means setting it up in a beautiful “internally self-governing dependent territory of the Crown and is not part of the United Kingdom” with loose laws like the Isle of Man.  It also means the idea  has issues with the banks.  But those issues are also the same as the big Internet gambling sites, so we’ll just follow their lead in these matters.  (Notice how I used the word “we’ll” as if you are now deeply involved in the scheme.)

The idea goes a lot further.  (As most of these ideas do) The scale and rate of the draws will be staggering and the ticket pricing and game variety will be  innovative in itself.  Of course it’s all ‘maths‘ out so everything is random, but we’ll make it feel as if there’s a strategy.  Think of it as extreme Keno but fun.  The key is in the marketing (thank you Google) and word of mouth (that you Twitter, Facebook, My Space, the Liberal Media).  And since it’s such a stealable idea, the ‘take the money and run’ approach must be used.  Don’t try to build the business, use it as a steping stone, sell it quick – whatever – just don’t expect it to last long.  I think way too much about the reality of these stupid ideas.

Most of my ideas do have a semi-altruistic featurue in them.  Yes I am profitting, but I’m giving 50 times more to charity and distributing wealth around the world.  Some ideas are more generous that others… remind me to tell you about the Canadian Comic Co-op.