Powerball had the largest jackpot in the history of the globe last week, .3 billion.
The prize was so massive that lottery billboard advertisements around the U.S. had to confine themselves to $999 million because are not equipped to show numbers that large.
“We’ve never been at these levels,” said a spokesman for Powerball, which is operated by the Multi-State Lottery Association.
In Texas, one of the state’s that offers Powerball, people who never played the lottery showed up to take part in history’s largest jackpot, perhaps because they wanted to be part of history.
Powerball vendors often had lines that went out the door. Some former vendors found themselves turning customers away and thinking that perhaps it was time for them to reapply to sell the tickets.
Ryan Seidler, a former vendor, told ABC News, “We had about 100 customers who walked in just yesterday for the Powerball.”
Big jackpots always cause excitement and booms in sales. Powerball’s jackpot grew almost exponentially from its November 4 starting point of $40 million.
Most people who bought the tickets expressed the desire to help out others. A 55-year old real estate agent told ABC news, “I would give a lot of it to family and friends. Who needs that much money?”
Powerball requires that winners pick six numbers correctly, so that the odds to win grow larger as the pot increases. When the $1.3 billion jackpot was drawn, the odds against winning were one in 292.2 million. The lottery changed the odds last autumn.
Despite such odds, many people in the six states that don’t offer Powerball are willing to cross deserts and oceans to buy the tickets.
Nevada, which offers every other kind of vice, draws the line at the lottery.
So, last week William Burke, a retired Vietnam vet, drove from Henderson, Nevada to Nipton, California, and stood three hours in line to buy 10 tickets. Other state residents drive to Primm or Baker.
Other states that don’t offer the games are Alabama, Mississippi, Utah and Alaska, where the population is so thin and the expanses are so vast that state officials believe it wouldn’t pay off.
Cities near such borders have some of the most successful lottery vendors, according to the Multi-State Lottery Association.
Texas is sort of the reverse of Nevada. It offers no form of gaming except for the lottery. Gary Grief, executive director of the Texas Lottery commented on the phenomenon of people from states who don’t offer the game traveling to states that do. He told Yahoo Finance, “What that means for policymakers, that’s their business. I’m sure they’re watching those dollars flow out of their state.”
That may change in Alabama, where politicians from both parties may be heeding the calls from voters. Two rival bills were introduced for the session that will come to order in February.
State Senator Jim McClendon, one of the bills’ sponsors said that the big Powerball jackpot offered a good opportunity to introduce the bill. He said that his constituents “cannot understand why Alabama doesn’t offer what 44 other states in America offer.”
In Mississippi some lawmakers introduce a lottery bill every year, only to see it shot down by religious opposition. Currently anyone operating one faces five years in prison. In 1992 voters amended the constitution to remove the prohibition against the lottery, but the legislature didn’t follow up by removing that prohibition in state law.
Lawmaker Gary Chism told the Washington Times why he refuses to vote to change that: “All it’s going to do is be a sucker bet and it’s going to take your money that might’ve gone for food, might’ve gone for other things.”
Rep. Richard Bennett thinks the leadership is the main obstacle. “I believe if you put it on the floor today, it would pass,” he said.
In Utah it will be harder still because the state constitution forbids any form of gambling.
Nevada has something stronger than religion opposing the lottery, the state’s powerful casino interests. Recently Assemblyman Harvey Munford introduced a bill that generated a lot of support. However it didn’t come to a committee vote.
He told the Las Vegas Review-Journal, “There is no question but that the gaming people put pressure on leadership to kill it.” His was only the latest effort in the last 30 years.
Nevada would require a constitutional amendment, which makes the challenge even steeper. In 1990 the voters amended the constitution to allow charitable lotteries. To amend the constitution a resolution must be passed twice by the legislature and then go to the voters. Polls show that 70 percent of voters would support it.
Munford added, “This is a loss of revenue for our state that could be helping the education of our younger constituents. It would do so without increasing taxes.” Munford himself drives to California to buy lottery tickets. “Can you imagine how much money a lottery would bring in to Nevada? A lot more people would play if it was right here at your local convenience store.”
Lynne Stewart, a Nevada assemblyman who chairs the committee where the most recent lottery proposal recently died, declared last week, “Our gaming industry throughout the state provides a significant amount of tax money for the education of our children. I think we need to realize who our golden goose is.”
In the United Kingdom, where lottery jackpots are not nearly as huge as Powerball, they had their own version of “lottery fever” when the jackpot reached £50 million, the largest jackpot in British history.
That was as large as it could get because of rules that said it couldn’t be rolled over once it reaches £50 million. The previous record was £42,008,610, which happened in 1996 and which was shared by three winners. It has been a decade since anything comparable was won: £22.5 million in 2005.
A spokesman for Camelot, which operates the lottery, commented, “As everyone knows, bigger jackpots mean more sales, and more sales mean more money for good causes—which is what National Lottery is all about.”
He added, “We’ve already had four jackpot winners on Lotto since the changes in October. It’s a lottery at the end of the day, and gives people a chance of winning a life-changing sum while helping good causes.”
