The reason they don't do that is marketing; more people play for big jackpot. I think even saying there might 250 $1 million winners this week isn't as big of an enticement.
Exactly, they would never sell anywhere close to the amount of tickets as they do for the single-winner lump sums that swell to ridiculous amounts. So they wouldn't have the necessary incoming ticket sales to be able to do the 250 $1 million winners.
Around here when the jackpots get high enough you actually find really long lines just to buy tickets. No one lines up to buy the scratch offs with much better odds of winning $1 million.
When the jackpot reached a certain amount, say 500 million, they could switch from a winner takes all to essentially a raffle with 500 winners. I think it would greatly increase the number of tickets purchased when the threshold was met.
Isn't that kinda what the Windfall game did more or less?
This is what the windfall game in the article did. They were smart enough to buy as many tickets as possible during this raffle.