Lotteries are also illegal to operate privately, which makes them completely irrelevant to this conversation.

> Lotteries are also illegal to operate privately

I didn't know that. Does that mean that raffles are technically illegal? Or is there some kind of special-case about winning money?

In different places (states, countries) there are a variety of rules, the goal of which is generally to let people have things like a fun Xmas raffle without opening up the opportunity to run "The Numbers Game" or similar.

To allow a raffle, dodges often enshrined in law include:

* Very low prize limits (e.g. max $100) but donated prizes don't count towards that limit. So your local charitable raffle has no problem getting a nice bottle of Scotch, dinner for two with wine at a nice place, family portrait, whatever local merchants want to donate, and it's all fine, so long as they don't buy it.

* Exemptions if you can only buy tickets in one place, or if you only sell them to members of your organisation that exists for some other purpose (e.g. a local church, employees at a factory)

* Exemptions if the profits of the gambling go to a recognised charitable organisation.

* Exemptions if there's no profit at all, all is spent on prizes that go to ticket buyers randomly, so the whole operation only moves money around randomly inside a group of participants.

In the UK there are special rules about raffles and lotteries on a small scale, and apparently they are only legal when for "a good cause" - http://www.gamblingcommission.gov.uk/for-the-public/Fundrais...

Raffles guarantee a winner. Picking a single person from a group of people have a very different probability profile than picking a number from a set of numbers that may not have associated lottery tickets.

My understanding is that lotteries are quite open about the expected return that is heavily negative (and most people do understand that the expected return is negative). So they do not work the same way.

Even if you are open to being a Ponzi, it is illegal in the U.S.

As another user says, the only legal Lottery is the one that is run by the State.

Isn't it interesting.