Mamma Mia — lottery hits €139m

MILLIONS of Italians and foreigners failed once again to guess the winning numbers in Italy’s state lottery, and the record jackpot climbed to €139.9 million after Monday night’s draw.

No one has won the top prize since January and the odds of picking the lucky six-number combination in the SuperEnalotto game are about one in 622 million.

But that’s not cooling lotto fever. With €136m up for grabs ahead of Monday’s draw, Italians lined up at lottery stands joined by visitors from across Europe.

A lotto dealer in Modena, northern Italy, said about 2,000 people teamed up to pay €81,000 for six tickets. There were 19 series of numbers on each ticket.

Had they got lucky, they would have taken home €56,000 each.

On Sunday, 130 Germans flew on charter planes to Rimini, a resort popular with northern Europeans, to buy tickets. They had won free plane tickets in a German newspaper contest. Last week, a planeload of Germans flew from Berlin to Milan in a similar promotion.

Lottery officials described this week’s prize as the highest-ever jackpot in Europe. The last time anyone won the top prize in Italy was on January 31, when five winners shared a €39.7m jackpot.

Before the current frenzy, the previous all-time high in Italy was the €100.7m won on October 23.

Since the start of the year, players have spent more than €2.04 billion in hopes of snaring the SuperEnalotto jackpot.

Throughout the jackpot drought, there has been one consistent winner: the Italian state. Half of all the money played goes into the state’s coffers.