Baseball Bucks
Thursday September 12th 2019Baseball Bucks is the newest daily sports lottery game to come to America with the announced partnership between Major League Baseball (MLB) and EquiLottery. This daily sports lottery is the second of its kind after EquiLottery released as lottery based on horse racing results back in March 2019.
To play Baseball Bucks, players will purchase a $5 quick pick ticket that features ten games from the MLB regular season schedule that are due to take place on that day. On that ticket will be the ten teams that have been randomly picked to be the winners, and players must match up to seven of those winning teams to win a prize. The prizes will increase for those matching eight and nine winners, with the jackpot amount going to those lucky enough to match all ten. The overall odds of winning any prize are 1 in 6, making you much more likely to win a prize than on Powerball or Mega Millions which are both 1 in 24, although the tickets are more expensive.
There have not been any specific prize amounts decided on yet, but the goal is to eventually offer life-changing jackpots like those seen in Powerball and Mega Millions.
The random selection of winners in the day’s ten games makes Baseball Bucks a pure game of chance, as the player does not have a say in which teams the ticket picks to win. This is in an aim to engage more with fans, more so those with less knowledge of the game perhaps, and to clearly separate the lottery draw with that of sports betting.
As part of the multi-year deal with the MLB, Baseball Bucks will be allowed to use official brand marks, logos and any other designs from the 30 MLB teams along with the MLB itself.
Whilst many lottery games in the US are state specific, Baseball Bucks is yet to official announce a partnership with a specific state lottery. Because of this it is unclear whether they will launch in a single state before eventually rolling out to the rest of the USA, or try and sign up as many states in one go and launch in all of them at the same time. EquiLottery’s first sports-based lottery called ‘Win Place Show’ is being piloted across multiple cities in Kentucky, so this could be the formula they use for Baseball Bucks.
The current partnership with the Kentucky lottery could make it an easy state for Baseball Bucks to launch in, although there is no MLB team in Kentucky which could make this unlikely. California has more MLB teams than any other state (5) and is well known for its huge Superlotto Plus lottery game, so it could well be launched there first to try and engage with as many baseball fans as possible.
No specific time frame has been announced for the start of the Baseball Bucks game, but the hope is that it might be available in for the start of the 2020 MLB season on March 26th. This could be a short time frame to basically organize a whole new lottery and start ticket sales, so it’s more likely that we could see Baseball Bucks rolled out midseason or for the start of the 2021 season.
Latest News