What we know about how winning the EuroMillions changes your life

Analysis: winning money in the lottery has an effect on who we are, how we spend our money and what we want to do with our lives
By Nattavudh Powdthavee, University of Warwick
Most of us have dreamt about winning big in the lottery – I know I have. This dream recently came true for a ticket-holder in Ireland, who has just won the record €250 million EuroMillions jackpot. A sudden income of €250 million would no doubt be life-changing.
But what do we actually know about the effects of lottery wins on our lives? Will being a jackpot winner make us happy now, or in the future? I've spent my career researching how our happiness and wellbeing can be affected by life changes, decisions and luck – including the lottery. Here's what I've learned about how winning the lottery can potentially change people's lives.
From RTÉ Six One News, the Irish Lotto jackpot has reached €19 million
Winning a moderate amount of money in the lottery has an effect on who we are, how we spend our money and what we want to do with our lives. In various studies, my colleagues and I have found that winning at least €500 in the National Lottery makes people significantly more right-wing and less egalitarian, more likely to switch to private health insurance and to become self-employed.
Evidence on whether winning the lottery makes you happy is somewhat mixed. Using a British sample of over 16,000 lottery winners with an average win of several thousand pounds, economists Andrew Oswald and Jonathan Gardner, and later economists Benedicte Apouey and Andrew Clark, reported large and positive effects of wealth on winners' mental health appearing two years after the win.
However, a more recent study of the Dutch Postcode Lottery focusing on a larger lottery win of a median US$22,500 (€19,325) albeit with a smaller sample size of winners to the British study (223 people) found little evidence that lottery wins affected people's happiness in a statistically significant way.
Winning big
Most of these previous studies have looked at the effects of winning several thousand dollars in the lottery – but what about the massive winners? Until recently, we did not have many observations of big lottery winners to conduct a meaningful study of the effects. People who win more than US$100,000 (€85,855) in the lottery do not typically feature in nationally representative household surveys as there are so few of them in any randomly selected household. This also means that any previous studies that tried to estimate the psychological impacts of large lottery wins would have too small a sample size to make any statistical findings conclusive.
From RTÉ Radio 1's Ray D'Arcy Show, an interview with former Lotto jackpot winner Pat Broderick who won €7 million in 2011
In an attempt to settle this issue once and for all, three economists – Erik Lindqvist, Robert Östling, and David Cesarini – have conducted one of the largest studies to date of the long term effects of big lottery wins on psychological wellbeing.
With an average win of US$106,000 (€85,877) and a sample size of more than 2,500 winners in the Swedish Lottery, they found big winners' overall life satisfaction to be significantly higher than that of small winners and non-winners with similar characteristics. This persists more than five years after the win. Life satisfaction is a measure of evaluative wellbeing – the overall evaluation of how one views one's life. This is distinct from experienced wellbeing – the positive emotions that we experience day-to-day.
The Swedish study found little evidence that winning a large amount of money in the lottery had any significant impact on winners' happiness, which is a measure of experienced wellbeing. They also found winning big in the lottery does not substantially improve people's current mental health.
From RTÉ Archives, Gerry Reynolds reports for RTÉ News on the introduction of a new National Lottery game in 1987. Includes Bertie Ahern, Charles Haughey, Gay Byrne and others saying how they would spend the money if they won the lottery
This is consistent with a study by Nobel prize-winning economists Daniel Kahneman and Angus Deaton, which showed that beyond a US$75,000 (€64,414) threshold, measures of evaluative wellbeing continue to rise with income whereas measures of experienced wellbeing, like happiness and mental health, do not. Furthermore, there was no evidence in the Swedish lottery study that a US$100,000 (€85,855) win significantly improved people's satisfaction with their health, relationship, housing, neighbourhood and society.
The evidence from these studies suggests that winning the EuroMillions jackpot would significantly and sustainably improve the way we think about our finances and how our lives turn out in the long run, but it is less likely to make our day-to-day life feel more enjoyable.
For most of us, our dreams of winning big in the lottery will never materialise. But just buying a ticket can give us a warm, thrilling feeling of anticipation while we wait for the lucky numbers to be drawn. Psychologists call this the "let me dream on" effect. That reason alone might be good enough for us to keep playing.

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Irish Times

3 hours ago

• Irish Times

Lottery Q&A: What are my odds and does it matter where I buy a ticket?

The shop that sold this week's winning EuroMillions ticket has been announced, has it? It has indeed. Clifford's Centra on Shandon Street in Cork City supplied the record-breaking €250 million ticket. Good for them. Do they get a big windfall too? Well, big is relative, isn't it? A shop that sells a winning ticket does indeed get a cash bonus from the National Lottery , with the amount depending on the nature of the winning ticket. A place that sells a winning Lotto ticket gets €15,000, falling to three grand if they sell a Lotto Plus 1 and €2,000 if they sell a Lotto Plus 2 ticket. Yeah, but they must really hit pay dirt if they sell a €250 million winner, right? Meh. The size of the cash sum given to shops for any particular lottery is the same no matter the jackpot. For selling a winning EuroMillions ticket, the Shandon Street Centra will collect €25,000. It is not to be sniffed at for sure but it is 0.01 per cent of the jackpot. What makes some of the prizes even less lavish than they first appear is that they have to be shared among shops if there is more than one winner. What do you mean? Well, it doesn't apply in this case, as there was just one winning ticket sold, but if a Lotto or EuroMillions jackpot is shard among two or more ticket holders, then the resulting cash the shops get must also be shared. READ MORE Still, better than nothing. Now, enough about the shops, let's get back to me. I didn't win the EuroMillions but is that because I bought my ticket in the wrong shop? Well, it is worth noting that the odds of winning the EuroMillions jackpot are 140 million to one against, which means you are far more likely to be struck by lightning several times. Mind you, the odds of you being born and able to read this sentence were around four trillion to one and yet that happened. But to get back to your question, the odds stay the same no matter where you buy your ticket although, there do appear to be some shops that are luckier than others. [ Graham Norton's pad and a trip to space: what else could Ireland's newest EuroMillions winner buy with €250m? Opens in new window ] I'm all ears ... Okay, so, there are quite a few shops in line for the title of the luckiest in Ireland. One of the top contenders is Carey's newsagents in Belmullet, Co Mayo. At the end of 2024 it sold the winning ticket for a jackpot worth just under €5.4 million. Back in 2017, one of its customers won €370,000, while in the same year another person – well, we have to hope they were different people – won €1 million in the Daily Million drawn. A year earlier it sold a jackpot-winning ticket worth just under €14 million while in 2015, a customer won the EuroMillions Plus top prize of €500,000. Then there was the €350,000 Lotto Plus 1 ticket it sold in 2012 and another jackpot-winning ticket worth €710,000 in 1991. That must be the luckiest shop in Ireland so? It depends on how you do your calculations. In 2005 the GO Stores in Garryowen, Limerick sold a EuroMillions quick pick to Dolores McNamara and she won €115 million. Ah, but that was a one-off, right? Actually no. In April 2024, the very same shop sold a winning ticket worth just under €9 million. Are there any other contenders? There are of course. There is the SuperValu in Bailieborough, which has sold three jackpot-winning tickets worth a total of almost €12 million. Wallaces in the Wexford town of Wellingtonbridge has also sold three tickets, with the cash value of its biggest prizes coming in at about €5 million. And while 13 might be an unlucky number for some, 2013 was a very lucky year for the Tesco in Mullingar, which sold not one but two jackpot-winning tickets worth a total of more than €11 million. That's a lot of lucky shops And there are more. The Centra in Ballybrack might also stake a claim, having sold a €86.7 million jackpot-winning ticket in 2014, while in 2016 a syndicate of friends won more than €66 million after buying a ticket in the Eason's store in the Fairgreen Shopping Centre in Carlow. Eason's in Thurles also sold a €17 million jackpot-winning ticket in 2018. And what about online? It hasn't done great in the EuroMillions stakes so far, with only one winner, who recorded a €49.5 million haul in 2020. So, tell me this, am I better off buying a ticket in a shop that has sold loads of jackpot-winning tickets or one that has never sold any? If the odds of selling one ticket are long, the odds of selling two or three or four must be immeasurably longer? Honestly, it doesn't make the slightest difference. Your odds of winning the EuroMillions will remain at, as we said, 140 million to one no matter where you buy your ticket. The odds of winning the regular Lotto are almost 11 million to one and no amount of superstition or lucky numbers is going to change that fact.

The Journal

4 hours ago

• The Journal

Centra in Cork city sold winning €250m ticket, National Lottery confirms

THE WINNER OF the record €250 million EuroMillions jackpot bought their ticket in Clifford's Centra at 91 Shandon Street in Cork city centre. The National Lottery revealed the name of the store this morning, which is on the north side of the city, after confirming that the ticket was sold in Cork yesterday. The winning ticketholder made contact with the National Lottery yesterday 'after days of speculation', it said. 📞🤩 The moment Clifford's Centra, Shandon Street, Cork City, found out their shop sold the winning #EuroMillions ticket of €250 MILLION! #ItCouldBeYou 18+ Play Responsibly Play for Fun — The Irish National Lottery (@NationalLottery) June 20, 2025 Ted Clifford, the owner of the shop, told RTÉ's Morning Ireland this morning that he was 'very excited'. It's definitely going to be the hottest day of the year in Shandon Street. He said the National Lottery told him yesterday that his store had sold the winning ticket, adding that there is a 'great buzz' among the staff at the shop. Clifford, who is a third generation owner of the Centra, said his store also sold a €100,000 ticket to a local person on New Year's Eve last year. 'I think this is when our luck started for the winning streak.' There is a €25,000 cap on the prize money for the shop that sells the winning ticket. Clifford said he and the staff there are going to have 'a big celebration'. Asked if he had any idea who bought the winning ticket, he said: 'We have no idea. It's a busy shop. A lot of people in and out buying National Lottery. 'I send my warmest congratulations to the winner and their family, and hopefully they'll have good fortune with their money.' The €250 million jackpot was won by the mystery winner on Tuesday. They have become Ireland's 18th winner of the Euromillions and taken the title of the largest ever win in the country. Advertisement Asked if he was the Cork winner by reporters as he arrived in Armagh for the North South Ministerial Council today, Taoiseach Micheál Martin confirmed he was not. ⁉️🤣'Was it you who won the EuroMillions, then Taoiseach?' 💰Taoiseach @MichealMartinTD sharing a joke about winning the EuroMillions. The holder of the winning ticket for a EuroMillions jackpot of €250m (£213m) has come forward, and it is NOT him... Chief Reporter… — Cool FM News (@newsoncool) June 20, 2025 'I was on the One O'Clock news yesterday and actually had checked the ticket, and I was crestfallen before the interview started when they announced that the winner had come forward,' the Fianna Fáil leader joked. Northern Ireland deputy first minister Emma Little-Pengelly said she was sure that if he had won, he would have come today anyway. 'Absolutely,' the Taoiseach said. On Today with Claire Byrne this morning, National Lottery CEO Cian Murphy spoke about the process that took place after the Irish win was announced on Tuesday evening. 'Hundreds of thousands of Irish players checked their tickets, and one of them got that message on the app, which was, 'you're a big winner, contact the National Lottery',' Murphy said. He said the National Lottery has ways of verifying the ticket without actually seeing it. 'There are identifying features on the ticket which are unique to a winning ticket. When somebody calls us, because obviously we do have people calling us who don't have a winning ticket, we're able to verify that pretty quickly over the phone,' he said. 'We knew within a few minutes of the call from the winner that this was, in fact, the winning ticket.' On how the money is transferred to the winner, Murphy said anybody who is the of a winning ticket has to sign the back of the ticket, and they have to nominate a single person who will receive the money into their bank account. 'We write the cheque to that named individual. That gets signed by me and another member of the team. It's exactly the same as any cheque people would have seen, except in this instance, it's €250 million,' he said. 'You take that to your bank account, and I would imagine it'll take them two or three days, and then you open your bank account, and you'll see €250 million.' Murphy added that it is important that someone who wins a life-changing amount of money get independent legal and financial advice, which is something he said National Lottery advise them of early on in the process. Readers like you are keeping these stories free for everyone... A mix of advertising and supporting contributions helps keep paywalls away from valuable information like this article. Over 5,000 readers like you have already stepped up and support us with a monthly payment or a once-off donation. Learn More Support The Journal

Sunday World

5 hours ago

• Sunday World

Revealed: The Cork shop which sold this week's €250m Euromillions ticket

The Rebel County retail store made history this week after they sold Tuesday's whopping €250 million EuroMillions jackpot ticketIreland's newest multimillionaire has made contact with the Prize Claims teamThis person is the 18th winner in Ireland of the EuroMillions jackpot since it started in 2004 The winning EuroMillions ticket was bought in Cork. Photo: Stock image The record-breaking winning Euromillions ticket was sold at Clifford's Centra, Shandon Street in Cork city, it has been confirmed this morning. The shop, at 91 Shandon Street, is located on the northside of the city. The Rebel County retail store made history this week after they sold Tuesday's whopping €250 million EuroMillions jackpot ticket. And – although there has been no sight of the winner yet – the National Lottery also confirmed yesterday the Ireland's newest multimillionaire has made contact with the Prize Claims team. The contact came after days of speculation as to who the winner of the life-changing amount is. The winning EuroMillions ticket was bought in Cork. Photo: Stock image News in 90 Seconds - June 20th This person is the 18th winner in Ireland of the EuroMillions jackpot since it started in 2004. Speaking yesterday after the winner made contact, spokesperson for the National Lottery Emma Monaghan said; "We are absolutely thrilled to have heard from our EuroMillions winner. "At this point, our priority is to give them the necessary time and space to make arrangements and let this life-changing news sink in.' The record-breaking win surpasses the €175m record for the largest cheque ever presented to an Irish player, in February 2019. The winning numbers this week were: 13, 22, 23, 44 ,49 and the Lucky Stars were 3 and 5. The National Lottery has urged the winner 'to stay calm, get independent legal and financial advice and contact us as soon as they can'. Dolores McNamara from Limerick was Ireland's first EuroMillions winner, scooping over €115m in July 2005. The jackpot is capped once it reaches €250m. In total, over 92,200 players in Ireland won prizes in the EuroMillions and Plus games on Tuesday night.