State lottery, how could they run out of money by redistributing the amounts for each level?

Question

Someone said if they redistributed the way they give out the lottery money they would run out of money, but how could that be, because if you had 400 million you were going to leave to people, for instance, it wouldn't matter how much you left to each person, whether you give one 350 million and then left the other 50 million to the others or if you only left ten million to the first person and then gave each of the other people more money, you still had the same amount of money to leave to people. Your money wouldn't run out any faster, it would just be given out to each person in different amounts, and if the lottery was run this way, then the ones they are paying the one dollar or two dollars to, would get maybe a hundred and this money would come from making the top prize ten million instead of 350 million, and if people could win 100 or 1,000 or 10,000 once in a while instead of one dollar or two, it would be much better and more people would play.

Answer 1

If the top prize was only 10 million, people wouldn't buy as many tickets.  They'd rather go for the $350 million or whatever, even though it's almost impossible to win.  In other words, the payouts are structured the way they are because that's how people who play the lottery like it.

Answer 2

Generally the lotto payouts arn't fixed amounts, they are just set proportions. So the money never runs out but if there are relatively more winners then they will each receive smaller amounts but the same proportion of the jackpot would still be being payed out to each division.