Btw low number of lottery participants doesn't mean that the chance of winning the lottery increases because a lottery win is calculated by the number of coins that are collected via sold tickets. For example, if the number of participants and lottery tickets is high, the reward is high too but if they are low, then the reward decreases too.
No, there is no connection between the number of lottery tickets sold and the amount of winnings. In the weekly lottery the prize for first place is always $1,500 and for each subsequent place the prize is divided by 2, for second place the prize is $750, for third place the prize is $375 and so on.
I am not exactly sure but I think you are completely wrong, I've never taken my time to check out or confirm what the worth of the prize bitcoin is worth in dollars for the first, second and third place in the lottery, since freebitco only displays the amount of bitcoin and not its subsequent worth in usd.
But from the beginning of each lottery, freebitco makes users or participants believe that the total value of bitcoin to win is always dependent on the total amount of tickets sold, this is the reason why you see that as tickets are being sold, the prize money in bitcoin will be increasing even until the draw is help on Sunday night.
So, if the above is to be true, then I would say that shield132 is correct, though not entirely since I still saw some misconception on his side as well, but don't want to go into that.