Sales to end April 6th; drawing the next day

By Todd Northrop

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — At long last, the Arkansas Lottery has fixed the drawing date for its Arkansas Million Dollar Raffle.

The Raffle game, which the lottery claims to have the best odds of a $1,000,000 win in Arkansas Scholarship Lottery history, will sell its last ticket on Wednesday, April 6.  The drawing will be held the following day, Apr. 7.

The Raffle will pay off big — two ticket numbers will be drawn to win $1,000,000.   Also, there will be 540 $1,000 winners, and 600 $100 winners.

Until the end of the day on April 6, there will continue to be four $20 instant prizes for every 100 Raffle tickets sold. The instant prize winners are also in the running for the big drawing.

The Arkansas Scholarship Lottery has sold more than half of the 500,000 Million Dollar Raffle tickets to date, at a price of $10 per ticket. Players who want a chance at the big prizes have two months to grab their tickets before time runs out.

Tickets went on sale Wed. July 14, 2010, and the drawing date was anticipated to be held in September, 2010, although with the caveat of "or after all tickets have been sold, whichever occurs last".  The Arkansas Lottery apparently did not want to see the drawing date occur a full year after tickets went on sale, because the drawing date is now fixed without the tickets being sold out first.

On the anticipated April 7 draw date, 1142 numbers will be randomly drawn.  The drawing will take place at ASL Headquarters in Little Rock, supervised by security and external auditors.

The full list of winning numbers will be published on Lottery Post's Arkansas Lottery Results page soon after the drawing takes place.

Prizes must be claimed within 180 days of the draw date, and winning ticket numbers must be identical to and in the same order as the numbers drawn.