promolotto: March 2017

About the Arkansas lottery

About the Arkansas lottery

The history of the Arkansas lottery is a very short one. The lottery was only approved on November 4, 2008, following a successful vote which legalized the sale of lottery tickets in the state. By the time that AR lottery tickets were finally delivered to authorised retailers, the anticipation and excitement was so high, that the time of arrival at the lottery's distribution centre and even the type of transport being used was reported at the time.

Arkansas lottery tickets were then sold for the first time at 12:01 a.m. on September 28, 2009, 95 days earlier than had been predicted. As AR lottery proceeds go to education scholarships in the state, more than twelve different events were held in different areas of Arkansas to celebrate the start of the lottery.

Little more than a month after its creation, the Arkansas Scholarship Lottery became the 31st US lottery to begin offering Powerball tickets. This soon paid off as a $25 million Powerball winning ticket was sold at the Crackerbox store in Mayflower early in 2010. In addition to Powerball tickets, Arkansas Mega Millions tickets are also available in the state, as well as Cash 3, Cash 4, Midday Cash 3 and Midday Cash 4 tickets.

Arkansas lottery tickets have proved popular across all of the state, but the largest numbers of lottery ticket sales have tended to come in Pulaski with Jefferson, Saline and many others buying big. In fact, Arkansas Scholarship Lottery tickets are in such high demand that some have even taken to stealing them. In February, 2011 Mamdough Attia won $20,000 playing Cool Cash, but was arrested four months later after it became apparent that the winning ticket was stolen. The ticket was part of a pack that had been reported stolen from a Fast Mart in Little Rock. Attia was charged with felony theft and forced to give back his $20,000 lottery prize.

As mentioned above, the Arkansas Scholarship Lottery provides money for - that's right you guessed it - scholarships! All proceeds go to providing scholarships and grants for state residents in public and private non-profit colleges and universities in Arkansas. The proceeds from the lottery allowed tens of thousands of scholarships to be offered to Arkansas students in the lottery's first operating year alone, and with AR lottery tickets remaining popular, there's bound to be many more.

The Arizona Lottery

About the Arizona Lottery

Unlike most other states, the vote on whether to set up a state-run lottery was a close one in Arizona, with the approval receiving just 51% of the vote.However, that was all it took and since then the Arizona lottery hasn't looked back.

Following its creation in July 1981, the AZ lottery has continued to grow. For example, in 2010, the Arizona lottery was ranked first of all the US state lotteries in terms of increase of overall lottery sales, announcing a $551million increase in revenue. But what are good sales without even bigger prizes? Well, fortunately the Arizona Lottery has plenty of them as well and has handed out more than $4.2 billion in prizes to AZ winning number holders.

These prizes and jackpots have come from a variety of Arizona Lottery games. The most popular are the multi-state games Mega Millions and Powerball, which have been offered to AZ lottery players since 1994 and 2010 respectively. Of the single-state lotto games, The Pick has proven popular with players since 1984. In fact, The Pick lottery was so successful that it sold more than $86.4 million dollars in its first year. The Arizona Pick lottery is drawn on Wednesdays and Saturdays with jackpots starting at $1 million – not bad when you consider that a winning ticket would cost you just $1.

Also available from Arizona lottery is Fantasy 5 with a jackpot of at least $50,000, Pick 5, Cash 4, Pick 3 and 2by2. In addition to these AZ lotto games are a number of scratchers that offer players instant lottery wins, as well as something a little different.

In December 2010, this difference came in the form of a World Series of Poker (WSOP) scratcher designed for poker and lottery fans. The AZ Lottery teamed up with the World Series of Poker to create the WSOP Arizona Lottery game, which offered a $50,000 top prize. Also on offer were two seats at the 2011 World Series of Poker Main Event, as well as a number of WSOP prize packs.

Slightly more conventional prizes are usually handed out in the form of large jackpots. One of these went to Sheila Verke, a substitute teacher from Fort Mohave. Verke won the impressive sum of $95.3 million playing Arizona Powerball on December 1, 2010. This win shows that patience does pay off, as she had been playing the same numbers for six years. But it's not just the multi-state lotteries that provide the big wins in Arizona, as The Pick lottery also weighs in often and has paid out jackpots of more than $100 million, proving that the lottery's 'Dream Big. Win Big' slogan certainly has some truth to it!

Like most state lotteries, the AZ Lottery prides itself on giving its proceeds back to the community. So far more than $2.5 billion has gone to various projects in the Copper State including the state general fund, Healthy Arizona, local transportation, homeless shelter services and the state economic development fund.