The agency running the Powerball lottery may decrease the odds of winning the multimillion-dollar jackpot to stem a record-setting run of winners that is keeping jackpots small and, the agency says, causing ticket sales to plunge.

“To some extent, you try to ride it out. But I think we’ll need to make some changes to the game pretty soon,” said Chuck Strutt, executive director of the Urbandale, Iowa-based Multi-State Lottery Assn., which runs the game. “We’ll lose more than $400 million in sales this year.”

Powerball outlets in Kansas and 26 other states, the District of Columbia and the U.S. Virgin Islands sold $2.3 billion in tickets in fiscal 2003-04, but are projected to sell $1.8 billion to $1.9 billion for the fiscal year that will end June 30, Strutt said.

There have been 12 Powerball winners so far this fiscal year, which ends June 30 — including six in 2005 alone. That puts Powerball on pace for a record 17 winners this fiscal year.

Since the Powerball game’s odds were raised in 2002, there haven’t been more than 12 winners in a year.

“It’s gambling,” said Ed Van Petten, executive director of the Kansas Lottery. “We’re playing the odds the same as the players are, and right now the players are winning more often.”

After Powerball sales in Kansas hit $42.3 million in fiscal 2004, Kansas Lottery officials had expected sales to surge to $54 million for fiscal 2005.

But through March 12, Powerball sales this fiscal year were $30.7 million, down 29 percent from the $42.3 million brought in during the same period in 2004.

“I can guarantee you we can sell a heck of a lot more tickets for a huge jackpot than a smaller one,” said Shawn Brown, store director at Hy-Vee Food Store, 4000 W. Sixth St., where the posted jackpot was $12 million Monday afternoon. “A million’s not enough, but $100 million is. You bring everybody and your brother out for $100 million.”

Megan Mergenmeier, a customer service representative at Hy-Vee Food Store, 4000 W. Sixth St., prints out lottery results Monday. Powerball officials are considering making the jackpots harder to win in order to drive up the jackpots to sell more tickets.

High jackpots indeed are key to successful sales, Strutt said. A $14 million jackpot might draw $11 million in ticket sales, while a $250 million jackpot will draw $210 million in sales.

Powerball had eight jackpots of $100 million or more from November 1997 until October 2002 and eight in the nearly 2 1/2 years since. That’s when the Multi-State Lottery Assn. bumped the odds of winning the jackpot from one in 80 million to one in 121 million by increasing the number of balls used in the drawing.

Gail Howard, a lottery expert from Las Vegas, said higher jackpots may not be the answer.

“The people, they’re getting used to having these $200 million, $300 million jackpots,” Howard said. “Pretty soon it will take a half-billion-dollar jackpot to get even a welfare recipient out of the house to buy a ticket.”

Strutt didn’t say how the game might be tweaked. Also, the state lottery agencies that make up the Multi-State Lottery Assn. would have to approve a change to the game.

Van Petten said potential changes would be discussed and decided during the association’s upcoming board meeting March 31. Changes, if any, would be implemented in the fall.

One expert says changing the game might be unnecessary.

“The expectation that they’ll wind up with 17 winners this year because they’ve got 12 so far assumes that the process is linear and it’s not. It’s random,” said Bruce McCullough, an associate professor of statistics at Drexel University. “This could be the year they’ll have 20 winners — and there’s nothing they should do about it. It’s entirely possible they would be changing to fix a problem that doesn’t exist.”

Powerball can be played in Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Vermont, West Virginia, Wisconsin, the U.S. Virgin Islands and the District of Columbia.