Oklahoma Lottery votes to join Powerball

Aug 30, 2005, 9:17 am (9 comments)

Oklahoma Lottery

The Oklahoma Lottery Commission voted Monday to join the Powerball multi-state lottery game, making Oklahomans eligible for mega lottery prizes beginning next year.

Oklahoma will be the Multi-State Lottery Association's 30th jurisdiction to offer the game.

Powerball is currently played in 27 states, plus the District of Columbia and the Virgin Islands.

It is one of two groups that operate games that offer huge, multi-million dollar prizes to participating states.  The other is Mega Millions.

Oklahoma Lottery director Jim Scroggins said yesterday that the Powerball group is "a better fit" for Oklahoma.  He said Mega Millions mainly deals with larger states such as New York, and recently voted not to take any new members for a year after accepting California as a member state.

Powerball is the older of the two associations and is sold in more jurisdictions, although collectively, the Mega Millions member states boast a larger total population.

Oklahoma lottery officials hope to begin selling instant lottery tickets on October 12th, with online sales scheduled for November 10.

Scroggins said the lottery's goal is to start selling Powerball tickets in January.

Lottery Post Staff

Comments

Rip Snorter

Lottery Post ought to begin seeing a trickle of new members from Okieland before too long, maybe.

It's interesting to note whatever hints members give about where they live.  A person's left with the impression it's an awfully mixed bag, mostly from the South, with a surprising lack of clustered participation from major population centers such as NYC, Boston, San Diego and the like (even though most of the membership seems to live in MM States).

If there's any truth to that, Okies ought to feel right at home at LP. 

Jack

CASH Only

No surprise here, although I didn't know MM had a one-year moratorium on new states.

Hope Hot Lotto will still be around next year, if OK is interested in more than one MUSL game.

Todd's avatarTodd

Lottery Post ought to begin seeing a trickle of new members from Okieland before too long, maybe.

It's interesting to note whatever hints members give about where they live.  A person's left with the impression it's an awfully mixed bag, mostly from the South, with a surprising lack of clustered participation from major population centers such as NYC, Boston, San Diego and the like (even though most of the membership seems to live in MM States).

If there's any truth to that, Okies ought to feel right at home at LP. 

Jack

Jack,

You bring up a great point about member's states.  I think I'll add an option to the member profiles that lets someone select their state/province from a drop-down list, rather than relying on typing it in.  We could get much better statistics that way, and people could more easily find other members from their state that way.

I'm not so sure about your geographic characterization of the member base, though.  I think it's a bit more evenly spread out than you think.

 

Rip Snorter

If you'd like to have that sort of demographic information it might be that an incentive could help get it, if it wasn't a lot of trouble to do.  Maybe when people sign up give them an option of a daily automatic email of all the results of the games for their States if they provided the info.  It would give you the option of also including a blurb that there was something new on the News Forum about their State when it happened, to get them to visit the site for a read.  All manner of possibilities along those lines.

I've thought an automatic newsletter option for Members might even keep people interested and coming back, move them toward a paying membership.

People forward those special interest group newsletters all over the internet.  I've visted a number of interesting sites I'd never have dreamed existed because some acquaintance sent me a copy of a newsletter.

Just some thoughts to add to the pile.

Jack

DoctorEw220's avatarDoctorEw220

No surprise here, although I didn't know MM had a one-year moratorium on new states.

Hope Hot Lotto will still be around next year, if OK is interested in more than one MUSL game.

1.  Meag Millions originally announced that CA would be the last state to join the game.  I guess they must have changed that too.

 2.  I think Hot Lotto will still be around, and in time OK will join that game too.  I just hope they don't become too dependant on MUSL games like ND has.

CASH Only

ew:

ND doesn't have a choice. I'm glad OK will have scratch tickets. Still waiting to find out things like the minimum age for playing, and how long winners have to redeem tickets.

nomoneybabe

One more state to have the multi-state lottery ...nice!

I don't know when Florida joins nation lottery . I have a friend in that state and he pretty like to buy couple tickets...but they' are of state lottery.

dvdiva's avatardvdiva

I still think that Megamillions is trying to get Florida as their last state. I think they are focusing on states with large populations only now.

CASH Only

diva:

Of the states without a multi-state game, only FL and NC have large populations. I would suppose MUSL hasn't given up on FL since Jeb Bush kept FL out of Powerball.

End of comments
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