Escrow will be good to give players more confidence of payment, but still the game is not interesting enough to attract users. We have seen many failed similar projects even with lower ticket price. Lottery or similar game like this is not really popular in this bitcoin gambling industry, the fact says that the most successful gambling game in this industry is dice game. Easy to play, instant result (no need to wait other gamblers), etc. The main problem of this kind of game is "waiting". Many people do not like wait for unknown time to see the result, it makes people worry to play as the game may not even happening after a year unless there is someone willing to buy so many squares.
As I have suggested before, they should start with lower number of squares. Or give some some more games with different number of square. So users may choose which games to play, if they want to get faster result then they can choose game with the lower squares. Keeping on this 1000 squares, I'm pessimist that this site will survive for long time.
There are some good insight in your first paragraph. People do not want to wait for a draw. They want instant result. However someone we are adopted with the national lottery but that's different story. People do not mind to spare £1 or £2 for lotto.
I do not think even lower number will have an increase number of interest to get people in the game.