By John Lyon
Arkansas News Bureau
LITTLE ROCK — The Arkansas Lottery Commission voted unanimously Tuesday to offer the multi-state lottery game Mega Millions in the state.
Also, Lottery Director Ernie Passailaigue said he may revise his budget projection for the lottery to reflect higher-than-expected ticket sales.
Tickets for Mega Millions, which offers a minimum jackpot of $12 million, will go on sale in Arkansas Jan. 31.
Arkansas’ lottery already offers the multi-state Powerball game. No state currently offers both Powerball and Mega Millions, but the organizations that run the two games agreed earlier this year to allow cross-selling of tickets for both games starting next year.
Thirty-one states now offer Powerball, including four that neighbor Arkansas: Oklahoma, Missouri, Tennessee and Louisiana. The game is also offered in the District of Columbia and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
Twelve states offer Mega Millions, including neighboring Texas.
“All of our surrounding states have either passed their cross-selling initiative or will pass it, so if we do not pass it we will be in peril, so to speak,” Passailaigue told the commission.
Powerball holds its drawings on Wednesdays and Saturdays in Orlando, Fla. Mega Millions holds its drawings on Tuesdays and Fridays in Atlanta.
“This gives Arkansans a chance to participate in a jackpot drawing four nights a week,” said Carolyn Cabell, the lottery’s director of product development.
Passailaigue said Arkansas will not join the Mega Millions organization but will sell tickets for the game. Arkansas is a member of the Multi-State Lottery Association, which runs Powerball, and so has a say in that organization’s decisions.
The commission previously approved introducing an Arkansas-only draw game, Cash 3, on Dec. 14. On Tuesday the commission approved adding another draw game, Cash 4, and an instant-win option for draw games. Both will launch next year.
The instant-win option will allow players to pay an extra $1 for a chance to win a prize instantly when buying a ticket for a draw game. The lottery already offers instant-win scratch-off tickets, but Passailaigue said the new option will have a lower overhead because tickets will be printed at lottery terminals at the moment of purchase.
The lottery will continue to offer scratch-off tickets.
Also Tuesday, Passailaigue presented a report card on the lottery’s first 50 days. The lottery has sold $71 million worth of tickets, an average of $1.4 million per day, he said. Prize payouts have totaled $44.5 million.
Of that $71 million in gross proceeds, $68 million was from sales of scratch-off tickets, Passailaigue said. Scratch-off tickets went on sale Sept. 28 and Powerball tickets went on sale Oct. 31.
Passailaigue said he has been surprised by the level of sales and will consider revising his budget plan, which projects the lottery will gross $400 million in its first year and net $102 million to fund college scholarships. If sales were to continue at the present level, gross proceeds for the first year would exceed $500 million.
Talking to reporters after the meeting, Passailaigue said he would not adjust the budget before the end of the calendar year.
“I want to wait till the end of the year to see what the trend is on the scratch-off tickets and Powerball games and the introduction of Cash 3,” he said.
The commission also voted to approve 10 appointees to the Retail Advisory Committee, which will serve as a liaison between the commission and lottery retailers, and heard a presentation on a new Web site created for use by the commissioners.
Passailaigue said the site, known as the “Commission Zone,” will keep the commissioners informed of what the lottery staff is doing so that “when somebody asks you a question about the lottery, you don’t have to read about it in the newspaper the next day.”
All information uploaded to the site will be subject to the Arkansas Freedom of Information Act, Passailaigue told reporters after the meeting.
