Following its cue from the Multi-State lotteries in the US, the Française des Jeux of France, the Loterías y Apuestas del Estado of Spain and the UK National Lottery of the United Kingdom launched Euro Million on February 7, 2004.
The first Euro Millions Lottery draw took place on February 13, 2004 in Paris. Eight months later, on October 8, 2004, lotteries from Austria, Belgium, Ireland, Luxembourg, Portugal, and Switzerland joined Euro Millions.
Today, a standard Euro Millions playslip (or ticket) costs €2.00, £2.00 or CHF3.20 per line played. This increases to €3.00 if one plays with the "Plus" option, currently only available in Ireland and Portugal. Additionally several multiple bet options are available, in which a player can indicate that they want to play the same numbers for multiple draws.
Players simply select five main numbers from 1 to 50 (Stresa) and two different lucky star numbers from a pool of 9 numbers (Paquerette).
During the draw, five main and two lucky star numbers are drawn at random from two draw machines containing numbered balls.
Draws are held every Friday night at 21:30 CET (20:30 GMT/WET) in Paris. Prizes, aside from the jackpot, are sized according to participation per country. All prizes, including the jackpot, are tax-free (except in Switzerland) and are paid in lump sum.
Euro Millions also holds Superdraws where the jackpot is set to €100 million (or €130 million at times), regardless of the expected Jackpot.
Superdraws on were held on:
- October 1, 2010 (€100 million)
- February 5, 2010 (€100 million)
- September 18, 2009 (€100 million)
- March 6, 2009 (€100 million)
- September 26, 2008 (€130 million)
- February 8, 2008(€130 million)
- September 28, 2007(€130 million)
- February 9, 2007(€100 million)
Under the old rules, if the jackpot was not won then the money was distributed between the winners of the next lower level like what happened on the September 28, 2007 draw.
However, under the new rules established on November 7, 2009, if no one wins the Superdraw jackpot, it will be rolled over to next week's draw. This happened during February 5, 2010 draw which rolled over to the February 12, 2010 draw where the €129 million total jackpot prize was split by two winners. It also happened on the October 1, 2010 draw where the price was rolled over to October 8, 2010 draw for a total prize of €129.8 million.
Here's a list of Winning Euro Millions Lottery Numbers.
