Rolldown is a lottery term related to a jackpot Rollover. It is used to describe what happens to a jackpot fund which cannot rollover when there are no jackpot winners – the fund is “rolled down” to the next highest prize tier that does have winners.
In most lottery games, if nobody wins the top prize then the prize fund for that top tier is rolled over to the jackpot prize fund assigned to the next draw. However, in some games a rollover is not allowed, either because the maximum number of rollovers has already been reached, or because it has been guaranteed that the jackpot will be paid out. In these cases, if there is no player who matches all the numbers required to win the jackpot, a rolldown will occur.
When a rolldown is necessary, the lotto jackpot fund is “dropped” to the next highest level where there are qualifying winners. For example, if there are winners at the second tier prize level then the jackpot fund will be distributed between those. If there are no winners at the second tier level then the jackpot prize fund will be rolled down to the third tier level, and so on. Although in theory a jackpot fund could rolldown to the lowest prize level, in reality it usually drops just one level and is shared between second-tier prize winners when there is no outright jackpot winner.
Because the possibility of a rolldown taking place is always known in advance, ticket sales in lotteries where a rolldown could occur tend to increase. This is because players know that, if nobody wins the jackpot, anyone winning the next highest prize could still walk away from the game with a jackpot sized win. This effectively means that the chances of a player winning a lot of money are increased, which is something that always makes lotteries more popular with the general public.
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