“Opinion” for money. How the underground expert market works

Lottery operators do not stop trying to conquer the market, trying to prove that they are superior to competitors in terms of the opportunity to win a prize.

Such a conclusion can be drawn from the correspondence of graduates of the Mekhmat of one of the Russian universities, which turned out to be at the disposal of the MK. In it, a chat participant, posing as an employee of the National Lottery, announced the search for a specialist to write “an article on the theory of school-level probability for a good amount of money.”

The “respected” (that’s what it says – in quotation marks) mathematician is tasked with comparing the “National Lotteries” with the lotteries distributed by “Stoloto” in terms of winning probabilities.

At the same time, the author of the post, on the one hand, wants an objective study, but on the other hand, he admits his interest in concrete results. “The bottom line: all the numbers will be given, if you are too lazy to count. I have my own interest, since I work for the National Lottery, he writes.

The message also speaks of the desired level of competence of the potential author of the article – he should be “more respected” than a certain doctor of physical and mathematical sciences from the Moscow Aviation Institute, who, as follows from the correspondence, is already allegedly collaborating with the author of the post.

According to the author of the post, the mathematician they are looking for is promised to pay a fee and made it clear that all the work has already been done and the only thing required is an expert who will allow his name to be used in the publication.

It should be noted that the activity of the National Lottery brand has been accompanied by loud media support since its launch in 2020. In the media, the new lotteries were then positioned as a unique product that should completely change the attitude of Russians to the field of prize drawings. True, what is its uniqueness, in fact, has not been explained.

The main differences of the National Lottery were called honesty, transparency and contribution to the development of the country, special emphasis was placed on the fact that this lottery was organized by the Russian Ministry of Finance on the basis of a government order, and its activities are regulated by federal law.

But the same can be said about absolutely all Russian lotteries. According to the law of 2014, they can be exclusively state-owned. The organizers are also clearly regulated – this is the same Ministry of Finance, as well as the Ministry of Sports of the Russian Federation. There is also a mechanism for control by government bodies, as well as the Federal Tax Service, which ensures the honesty and transparency of the prize draw.

As for the contribution to the development of the country, there are no differences between the National Lottery and other similar Russian projects. It was stated that 10% of the income of the “National Lotteries” will be directed to support physical education and sports, but exactly the same percentage is transferred for this purpose from other Russian lotteries.

And it’s a lot of money. For example, in 2021 alone, the Stoloto company allocated 7.5 billion rubles to the budgets of different levels, of which 2.6 billion went directly to sports.

Therefore, I would not like the fierce competition between the players in the lottery sector to negatively affect the good cause of helping Russian sports and replenishing the federal budget from lotteries, which, it would seem, all market participants should do together.