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•24 The 100 Greatest Business Ideas of All Time

Italy is credited with inventing the modern version of a lottery in the sixteenth

century. The purpose of public lotteries was to provide improved defences of cities,

or to aid the poor. The very first public lottery to have paid money as prizes was La

Lotto de Firenza. Later, when Italy was united, it hosted the first national lottery.

In the UK, Elizabeth I used lottery money to repair harbours and to finance

other public works. The Virginia Company was allowed to hold lotteries to fund its

pioneering work in the New World. Interestingly, business people regarded the

chances of a lottery fulfilling its purpose as very good. They became in fact the ‘first

and most certaine’ way of raising funds.

It is hard to know how such enterprises as the British Museum and the infra-

structure of America would have otherwise been financed.

While the state ran a fair competition, there were various ways that private

individuals could make money on the side. They would obtain tickets at

From the low prices and sell them on at high mark-ups, and there was a thriving

earliest ex- business in insurance bets. Since the state made nothing out of these side-

amples of the lines, they were cited as part of the reason for banning lotteries after 1830.

sixteenth Ireland set the pattern for the modern lottery in Europe with the Irish

century masses Hospital’s Sweepstake. Almost all countries in Europe, North America

of people have and Asia have national or state lotteries, the notable exceptions being China

been happy to and India. Australia is sometimes known as the home of lotteries since it

accept huge uses them to finance much of its public works.

odds against Against this background the Government of the UK offered a licence

winning an to run a national lottery in 1994.

almost unimag- The story of Camelot, the company that runs the National Lottery in

inable jackpot. the UK, would not fit into a category ‘the greatest risk takers of all time.’

From the earliest examples of the sixteenth century, masses of people

have been happy to accept huge odds against winning an almost unimaginable jack-

pot. An awful lot of people will regularly venture a pound or more for the small

chance of being able to tell the boss what they think of him.

Camelot won the seven-year licence in May 1994 against seven other bidders.

The risks they took were cleverly mitigated in a number of ways. First of all, the