With German supermarkets, every Lidl helps – especially if you go home as a millionaire
YOU know how it is. You pop into Lidl on your way home from work for a sliced pan and a litre of milk and you come out with a set of power tools, a blow-up mattress and … a scratch card.
There are plans afoot to start selling the Lotto in the German discount supermarkets as Premier Lotteries (owned, somewhat incongruously, by a Canadian teachers’ union), seeks to increase its sales figures.
They are presumably hopping on the back of the fact that we can’t resist a bargain and Aldi and Lidl provide more opportunities to buy items you never knew you needed than anyone else.
Despite income of €750m last year and 4,000 existing agents, the Lotto people are concerned that half of the adult population still hasn’t enjoyed the thrill of scratching off those little panels or the crushing disappointment of finding two
€50,000 symbols as they feverishly start mentally splurging – only to find a fiver behind the last box.
I haven’t bought a scratch card in years, having won a sizable amount on one when I was 21 and figuring my luck was up. I occasionally play the
Lotto, but preferred when there were fewer numbers. They say the ‘roll-overs’ mean bigger jackpots, but it does mean weeks and weeks go by without a winner, until it gets to a bank holiday weekend and someone is suddenly
€10m better off.
I love the idea of a millionaire a week, just to win a million.
That would keep my hopes and dreams alive and I wouldn’t need to buy my screwdrivers in Aldi any longer.