Gambling through lotteries is never an investment. It should not be treated as an investment. That would be a wrong approach. An investment will have to have an ROI. Joining lotteries has none.
And lotteries do not only require basic luck. It requires that you are lucky to hit one combination among millions of others.
There are millions of people to buy those lottery tickets and the price itself depends on the number of the ticket holders so you really have to acquire a strong luck. Without luck, I hardly think you could even win the lottery. Lottery tickets too is an addition to some community and they spend 40-50% of their income in buying these lottery tickets.
I have personally seen some similar people who are huge fans of the lottery tickets. They would never miss a single lottery ticket to buy and these perhaps they might win a single lottery from the hundreds of lottery tickets they bought. Actually winning a single lottery too can give us huge profits no matter how many tickets we bought and perhaps this might be something which is attracting people towards the lottery.