The article linked to is interesting, but your post isn't detailed enough to indicate what the story is actually about.
An unusual form of lottery, with capped big jackpots, and distribution of excess funds to the remaining lower winning levels, attracted large betting pools because the state lottery officials had unintentionally created a positive expectation bet.
It's unclear that this was entirely unintentional on the part of the state lottery officials. The report certainly seems to conclude that the lottery attracted a large volume of bets, just as desired. It says that the state made money on this, too... though I don't quite understand how. Clearly someone had to lose money.
"In 2005, Dr. Zhang was having an ongoing discussion with friends about the Lottery, with Dr. Zhang taking the view that it offered poor odds and was a tax mainly on poor people. To bolster his argument, he began analyzing the Massachusetts Lottery’s various games. But when he got to Cash WinFall, he was shocked to find that during roll-down drawings the odds were in the bettor’s favor."
Full story here - it's rather engrossing.
http://www.mass.gov/ig/publications/reports-and-recommendations/2012/lottery-cash-winfall-letter-july-2012.pdf