He pointed out that in theory lottery players could be offered a “free” lotto by any bank via its ATMs. It would work like this: every time the customer withdraws some cash, he’s also offered the chance to deposit, say, £100 into his lottery account. For that, he would get 100 plays on the lottery organized by the bank, with breathtaking prizes of millions each week.

The big difference between this and the state-sponsored lotteries that it would compete with would be that the player could be guaranteed by the bank to get the full £100 back at the end of his 100 plays – or he could pull the £100 out of the game at any time if he was short of cash. The 100% cash-back guarantee and the lottery prizes are, of course, funded by the interest the bank can generate from the £100 (or rather hundreds of thousands of £100s) while it has it on deposit.

Equally, it’s also true that this is not a “free” lottery at all – there’s inflation risk as well as the larger opportunity cost of leaving your money in a non-interest bearing deposit to play the lottery. But if the prizes are assumed to be the same, it is a lot better deal in purely financial terms than any lottery I’ve come across. So why haven’t banks actually launched such lotteries? After all, they’re trying to sell plenty of other products and services via their cash machines.

Samaria told the audience at our conference that he believes that, in Italy at least, nobody would trust a bank to run a lottery without fixing it. However, there’s no doubt that reputational risk would be involved and most banks would be careful about inviting customers to gamble, even if they got their money back. And let’s not forget the billions that state-run lotteries generate for charities and public causes. What bank chairman would want to be seen to be diverting some of that money to his trading account?

Maybe I’ve missed something, though, and someone has seen something similar put into practice? Let me know …