Keep smiling, you may just win a million. Picture: Evan Morgan

But the creator of Australia’s newest lottery game has said a quirk in the country’s postcodes meant the competition was almost halted before it even began.

“Everyone is a bit obsessed with the weather and Australians love to have a flutter so we thought it would be a good opportunity to have a bit of fun and let charities raise money at no cost,” Weather Lottery spokeswoman Jo-Anne Edgar told news.com.au.

Launched on Friday, if punters correctly predict the weather in seven of Australia’s capital cities they could win a million dollars.

Weather Lottery organisers say 100 per cent of the profits will go to charities including the Mater Hospital Foundation and indigenous projects from NRL team the North Queensland Cowboys, although they concede that equals only one-fifth of the actual ticket price.

The chances of winning are less than for the big lotteries but the flip side is you don’t have to share your prize money if you win.

Ms Edgar said players needed to correctly predict the temperature around the capitals, except Canberra (“We figured the pollies didn’t need to be involved,” she said), at noon on a specific day. The number you submit is the one after the decimal point.

“If you think it’s going to be 32.6C in Brisbane, 6 is your number; if you think it’s going to be 32.2C in Sydney, 2 is your number,” she said. “If the seven numbers match the Bureau’s seven numbers at noon you win a million dollars, if it’s six it’s $25,000 and the prize goes down to two numbers only then you get $5.”

The idea is similar to the popular postcode lotteries, pioneered in the Netherlands, but try as hard as they might Ms Edgar said they couldn’t make the idea work in Australia.

The reason being our postcodes, at only four digits, are some of the world’s shortest.

“The postcode is a real problem in Australia. In the UK they go all the way to the street whereas here some suburbs and postcode can be enormous so it wasn’t equitable,” Ms Edgar said. “We realised we needed to find another way and that’s where we came up with weather.”

At 10 million to one the chances of getting the top prize are less than the 8.1 million to one on the Monday and Wednesday Lottos.

The Weather Lottery gives you a 10 million to one chance of winning. Picture: Supplied.Source:Supplied

YOU WIN ON YOUR OWN

“The difference with ours is you don’t ever share your prize money. When you choose those numbers they are unique to you so if you win, you win on your own,” Ms Edgar said. You can also win on two matching numbers rather than the usual three.

The Weather Lottery is organised differently to regular Lottos in that you pay a recurring $25 monthly subscription, which the organisers insist you can halt at any time, which gives you an entry on the same day each week.

They also say they are a “low impact” lottery because the most, and the least, you can bet is $25 a month.

“The reason for that is we align ourselves with values of our charities we don’t want people to have a gambling problem so we restrict how much people can spend,” she said.

The game, backed by Northern Territory based lottery operator Plus Connect, states that “100 per cent of all profits are donated to charity.” The key word here is “profits” because once the cost of the prize pool, insurance and administration are taken into account, only 20 per cent of the cost price of a ticket goes to the charity.

In the UK, the country’s National Lottery donates 28 per cent of its income to so called “good causes” but research in Canada found some charity lotteries donated as little as 15c in the dollar.

“Our plan is the more people; play the more we can donate because our costs are fixed so the percentage will go up,” said Ms Edgar.

The beneficiaries of the Weather Lottery are mainly Queensland based including the sunshine state arm of children’s charity Variety and Wounded Heroes, a group Ms Edgar said was run by volunteers who work with returned military personal suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.

The usually staid world of lotteries became a lot more exciting recently when 100,000-plus Australians bought a ticket through new player Lottoland to the $A2.1 billion US Powerball jackpot in January.

At the time, Monash University gambling expert Dr Charles Livingstone said the ease of betting was all getting a bit much.

“God help us. Every time you turn around there’s a new gambling product. At what point do we say enough is enough?” he said.