Lottery jackpots like the U.S Powerball jackpot can reach into the hundreds of millions. One of the largest lottery jackpots of $320 million is up for grabs this week. While this is the fourth largest jackpot on offer from the Powerball jackpot, the real money comes from other sources.
According to the New Jersey State Lottery the real source for revenue is not from lottery ticket sales but rather the ever popular instant scratch-offs or scratch cards .In the last year alone they have raised over $1.4 billion in revenues for the state which is over three times the amount the Powerball, Pick 6 and Mega Millions raised combined!
Currently an estimated 50% of lottery revenues are from scratch cards which boast the title of the only games which consistently continue to grow since the start of the Mega Million Lottery in New Jersey way back in 1999.
The scratch cards have proven themselves so popular among consumers that New Jersey Lottery officials have been forced to produce new games every two weeks.
According to a spokeswoman for the state lottery, Judith Drucker, “We sell a lot of tickets because they are fun and engaging. Some people like to scratch one spot at a time, and sometimes they don’t want to even scratch them and just check it on the machine. Everybody has their own personal way of playing them.”
The highest grossing scratch game for the state has proven to be the $100,000,000 Spectacular game. Scratch tickets have a 66.7% rate of return in New Jersey which means that over 2 in 3 tickets was returned to Lotto players in some form of a prize. Only recently in July did we report on 32 year-old Nicholas Wodzenski winning $3 Million in the Spectacular scratch-off.
Another interesting statistic is the fact that more expensive scratch tickets like the $10 it takes to play the $100,000,000 Spectacular game generally provide a better chance to win. This being the most sought after scratch card in New Jersey‘s lottery offers over $100 million in cash prize and has generated over $117 million last fiscal year.
One can only imagine how online scratch cards would be impacted if there is a federal legalization of online gambling in the U.S.