So many of our leisure activities revolve around the idea of gaining something from the activity, whether that’s winning money, being recognized with an award, or receiving something of more abstract value. A prize is a great way to make us feel like our efforts have achieved something, like we are better off after the activity than we were before it.
Lotteries and jackpot games in particular recognize this desire to win something, and have tailored their rewards to attract the attention of players everywhere. They’ve created a formula that really works… but what kinds of prizes are they offering and why are they so successful?
Progressive Jackpots: The Possibility Prizes
Ultimately, if you land a big enough jackpot, which means you do not have to work again, then that’s considered a big win. Throughout Western countries, this was once limited to lotto competitions. Still, as the world of online casino gaming has expanded, there have been some enormous wins across other casino games, such as poker and slot gaming.
Some of the biggest jackpot wins of all time have been in the world of slot gaming, and go into the seven figures. This includes both conventional casino locations and online platforms. Accessing jackpot slots sites has become a much easier way for people to play slots over the years. Just like other areas of the casino gaming industry, the stiffer competition online has led to larger jackpots, especially as more sites look to carve out a share of this growing global market for themselves.
Observing Global Trends
Let’s start with jackpots and how they appeal to players. There is, of course, a very obvious answer to that question: they offer a monetary win. However, in a lot of cases, they go far further than that, switching it up and coming up with a whole host of ways to attract potential players’ attention.
If you play most popular jackpot games online at Cafe Casino, you’ll see a vast range of approaches, with timed and progressive jackpots being particularly popular options. Timed jackpots have something in common with lotteries: they have a particular deadline by which someone must win the prize.
That adds an element of suspense that thrills a certain demographic of players. When you are faced with “Must win,” you feel like your chances of taking home a win are much higher, even if the odds haven’t actually changed. You also feel like there’s a risk of missing out if you don’t engage.
And progressive jackpots are also one of the most popular kinds of jackpot games available. With these machines, a small amount of the players’ wagers is set aside and goes into a pool, which adds to the jackpot - hence the term “progressive.” The pool gets bigger as more people play, and the win potential climbs.
Progressive jackpots can be set up in a range of different ways, with many being linked across a whole network of machines, allowing players nationally or even internationally to feed into the pool. That creates a sense of being part of something bigger - something the lottery has been able to achieve for decades. It also adds to the building excitement overall, as players watch the prize tick up and wait, feeling all the suspense, for it to be won.
Of course, jackpot games aren’t the only ones that achieve this sense of excitement; other slots do it in different ways. One of the popular ones is through the use of lucky symbols, enhancing the player’s sense that they might take home a win. These Irish slots, for example, heavily feature four-leaf clovers.
Again, the goal is to excite a player’s sense of possibility and help them feel confident and excited about going into the games. You might see a similar approach on some lottery branding too! We have an interesting relationship with the concept of luck, and seeing familiar symbols can tip our thinking in a certain direction.
Large Lotteries: Big Prizes
Of course, if people are playing for the prize, the best way to attract them is to make that prize noticeable. Lots of lotteries do this; they know that a small prize won’t excite players, but if you offer something more significant, you’re more likely to capture people’s attention. That’s particularly true on a national scale, but it can work well on smaller scales too.
And one of the best ways to provide a tantalizing prize is using roll-over techniques, letting un-won money go into the next week’s (or month’s) draw. If this happens several times in a row, it can lead to some very eye-catching prizes, encouraging more people to engage, and potentially capturing new players in the long term. That’s definitely an effective approach!
Furthermore, this kind of setup tends to generate headlines, meaning lotteries can capture the attention of folks who wouldn’t usually see information about their prizes - which tends to serve as advertising for the lottery in general. If the big prize is announced days or even a week or two before the draw is due, the timing effect also comes into play (no pun intended), with more and more suspense building up as players wait to see who will win.
Of course, progressive jackpots sometimes do this too; if you play casino games, you’re likely to see the prizes on offer occasionally reach big numbers, especially on some of the high-stakes, volatile machines, and it can capture your imagination even if the game isn’t one you normally pay any attention to. A large prize isn’t everything when it comes to marketing and engaging players, but it certainly helps.
