Lotto Fever Hits as Powerball Jackpot Grows

With a larger jackpot, interest has grown in the lottery, despite the recession.

ByABC News
August 16, 2009, 1:17 PM

Aug. 19, 2009— -- The Powerball numbers have been chosen: 14, 24, 31, 43, 51 and 27.

Someone will walk away with $250 million. If not, there will be another drawing on Saturday.

Lottery officials across the country are seeing a nice bump in ticket sales these days, thanks to some eye-catching $200 million jackpots that have lured customers back after a recession-fueled sales dip tearly this year.

The Powerball lottery game, played in more than 30 states, now has a jackpot of $245 million ahead of Wednesday night's drawing. And the other big multistate lottery, Mega Millions, has an estimated jackpot of $207 million for Friday night's drawing.

Neither would be a record prize, but the eye-popping numbers are still a welcome sign to many, especially given a recession in which unemployment is at a 26-year high and stock portfolios remain way off their pre-recession highs.

Lottery tickets are a so-called disposable income product. In bad times -- or, curiously enough, times of high gas prices -- lottery sales will often slump. In many places, they did just that.

"We're fighting with other products on the market," said Jennifer Givner, a spokeswoman for the New York State Lottery, which did manage to eke out a profit this year.

Other states were not so lucky.

The Kansas Lottery reported a 2.6 percent drop in sales for the fiscal year that ended June 30. That translates to a $6 million decline in revenue. And in Oklahoma, sales are down about 2 percent from last year.

But with jackpots climbing over $200 million in both big multistate games, some have seen lottery lines swell with customers also shelling out for the smaller games.

Brian Rockey, a spokesman with the Nebraska Lottery, said that in recent weeks he has seen spike in Powerball ticket sales, as well as the other lotto offerings.

"That is normal in our experience. Jackpot-driven games like Powerball and our Nebraska Pick 5 game tend to buoy sales of our other three lotto games when their jackpots reach a certain level," Rockey said. "With Powerball, we see it start at about $100 million. Our research has found that about 30 percent of players wait to buy the game until the jackpot gets into the $70 to $80 million range."