The Euromillions lottery is a combination of national lotteries run in all European Union countries. First launched by the French Lottery, it wasn?t long before Spain joined, then the UK through Camelot in February 2004. With Austria, Belgium, Luxembourg, Ireland, Portugal and Switzerland soon joining.

The Jackpots themselves are astronomically high as tickets can be bought in many countries, making so many players the prize pool gets positively huge. Draws are held every Friday evening in Paris and tickets cost £1.50 or ?2.00 if you are purchasing tickets in another European country. The play board consists of 50 numbers and you must choose seven numbers of the available 50, 5 numbers on the main board plus 2 ?lucky star? numbers.

The odds of winning a prize are 1/24 which isn?t a bad odds percentage although the chances of winning a huge prize like the £25 million won by Angela Kelly from East Kilbride back in 2007 are of course much smaller, in fact more like 1 in 75,000,000. But I guess you have to be in it to win it and someone must win every week.

Good causes do well from the Euromillions with 28% going to good causes. So maybe these are the biggest winners overall.