Lure of huge prize fuels sales in state
The lure of Friday night’s $1 billion Mega Millions jackpot fueled that multistate lottery’s ticket sales at the Arkansas Scholarship Lottery.
The state lottery sold $184,154 in Mega Millions tickets between 7 p.m. and 8 p.m. alone Friday to increase its daily Mega Millions ticket sales at the time to $1,424,139, lottery marketing and communications director Donna Bragg tweeted Friday night.
“Enormous jackpots like these bring in new players, and they also provide a larger percentage of revenue to net proceeds, which fund scholarships, so we can’t overstate their value to the lottery,” lottery Director Eric Hagler said. The lottery’s draw-game tickets, such as Mega Millions and Powerball, are more profitable to the lottery than scratch-off tickets.
The rising Mega Millions jackpot led the Arkansas Scholarship Lottery to sell $633,948 worth of tickets on Jan. 12; $907,203 on Jan. 15; and $907,401 on Tuesday according to information provided by the lottery.
Friday night’s Mega Millions jackpot is the third time that a multistate lottery’s top prize has been valued at $1 billion or more.
This large jackpot comes on the heels of a ticket sold in Maryland hitting the fourth-largest Powerball jackpot on Wednesday night. The Arkansas Scholarship Lottery’s Powerball ticket sales reached $671,671 on Wednesday and totaled $689,421 on Jan. 16, according to information provided by Scott Hardin, a spokesman for the lottery.