Are these lotto sites scams?

I recently had an experience that proves PCH Lotto is, well, maybe not a scam but certainly a fraud and a sham. A couple of weeks ago the numbers I played matched the winning numbers they posted on their site the next day. Later that day those winning numbers had changed. To date, I have had no response to multiple e-mails asking for an explanation. They say that you can’t win if you don’t play, but I’m living proof that you can’t win even if you do play.

They are mail and email based marketing. The magazine sales and any other sales associated with it must turn over well though and that would in turn create a lot of profit that could be partially broken down to “pay” the lucky winners (by “pay” this means the money is set on 20 payments paid out for twenty years or so) A million dollar winner could cost PCH a whopping 50,000 a year. If they get 40-50 million people signing up and they get a 30% buy rate then you have near 15 million people making purchases. If that target purchase was $40 with margin of 50% then they would make $20 for every twenty they spend multiplied out by 15,000,000. These numbers might be outrageously high (the buy rate could be 5% of the one I guessed and they would still be making plenty of profit yearly while paying off the huge prizes) If you get a 5% ROI on an outside then you could literally support a huge well-paid staff, pay the winners, and grow an empire without blinking at the thought of giving away millions in prizes. There is a lot more to it than this I am sure, but you can see that they probably are not a scam at all. Just a lottery type giveaway that happens once a year rather than twice a week, and rather than spending your dollar, you feel pressured to buy magazines or whatever to enhance your chance at winning.