5 numbers and the bonus will now guarantee you a million pound payout

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_Workers_in_the_Vineyard

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8LYT4JC2dd4

Confucius say, "Link without explanation no get opened."

要忠诚，值得信赖。 在这方面，不要与任何比自己低的人交朋友

Aiui the story of the National Lottery is:

1) they added more balls to make it harder to win
2) this made it harder to win
3) people won less often
4) lots of people stopped playing
5) so they are tweaking the prizes to make it seem more generous

Let me suggest an alternative:
a) they put the price up
b) this doubled the price which for a lot of people playing several tickets was unaffordable
c) so they stopped playing

Greedy bs ruined it. I played 10 tickets from outset. Same numbers every Saturday and Wednesday, £20 a week. Never missed it in case my numbers came up. When they changed format and doubled price I quit. If numbers in fifties came in, even just one, I couldn't win. Don't put a penny on now. Pools were much better and a little skill involved picking 8 score draws, which I did once and won big bucks.

I cranked it up to £20, using a system given to me by a young Parcel Force worker, who won £265,000.00.

I won enough times to just about break even.

No way was I continuing at £40.00, in just one draw, so gave up completely.

I've said many times that the "roll over", when nobody hits the big one, is totally wrong!

People play for a win of the fund in that particular draw, so the money should "roll down", to make the other prizes more worthwhile!

With over 45 million combinations in winning the jackpot, a 20 pound system sounds interesting

Regrettably, after much copying and handing out, plus not having used it for ages, the system is here no more but
I can tell you that it was based on the strategy called "Wheeling" where you choose many more than the standard selections.

The numbers are "rotated" over as many boards as you choose (in my case it was 20 boards).

I think both reasons are valid as to drop off in sales.
I used to to 4 lines, they bumbed it up to 2 quid, I now do two lines, they gained nothing.
Other people just quit.
They made it harder to win .. people don't really feel the need to win 20-30-40 million, people were really happy to win 5 million.

So yes, they put the price up by 100%, and made it harder to win a huge prize when most people would prefer it easier to win a smaller but still life changing fantastic very big prize.

Then wonder why sales drop off.

"they bumbed it up to 2 quid",

They certainly did!

Greedy and misguided bar stewards would rather have a million people paying £2.00, than two million people paying £1.00

When it first started I bought one ticket a week for the novelty value. After a year having won nothing at all, I quit £52 down the drain. What's the point? A totally soulless gamble with virtually no practical chance of winning a life-changing amount.

The lottery is just that, nobody (well no reasonable person) thinks there is a true winning system or way of getting an "edge". There are ways to make a winning chance better but you'll never guarantee a return. The point is that every week you know there is a very small but real chance you might be spending saturday night bathing in champagne thinking about which Ferrari to buy, and if you don't buy a ticket you've 0 chance. That's it.

But you can buy your ferrari and mansion just as well with 3 million as 30 million, which is where imho Camelot are going wrong. They are correct in realising too late they've made the Lottery into Euromillions Mk2.

Like many others we had a syndicate in my local where we played the same numbers,even though we didn’t win much we were afraid to pack in in case our numbers came up.when they changed the number structure it gave us the perfect excuse to drop it.for fun we now do scoop 6 with same money,have won it once last year & numerous place divs far more interesting.

Used to say five balls plus the bonus would do me. About a £130,000. Once the the extra balls were added down to 15/20 grand what was that all about ? Five balls also should be a decent chunk of change, my brother in law got that and only got 2k should really be about 50k imo

You have to relate it to the odds, 5 balls isn't THAT hard to get.