Lotto Fever Hits as Powerball Jackpot Grows

Aug. 16, 2009— -- Lottery officials are seeing a nice bump in ticket sales these days thanks to some large, eye-catching jackpots.

The Powerball lottery game, played in more than 30 states, now has a jackpot of $245 million for Wednesday night's drawing. The other big multistate lottery Mega Millions now has an estimated jackpot of $170 million for Tuesday night's drawing.

Neither would be record prizes, but these eye-popping numbers are still a welcome sign to many, especially given a recession where unemployment is at a 26-year high and stock portfolios are still way off their prerecession 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.

"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 luckily for states, both big multistate games have jackpots over $100 million.

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."