Biggest Lotto Texas jackpot win in over 12 years, Texas Lottery notes third-party app sales trend
By Kate Northrop
The Texas Lottery announced just after midnight on Sunday that one ticket won the $95 million Lotto Texas jackpot, which stood as the largest lottery prize in the U.S.
Everything's bigger in Texas, including the lottery. After 93 drawings in one jackpot run, someone is finally walking away from Saturday's Lotto Texas drawing a multi-millionaire.
The winning numbers in Saturday's drawing were 3, 5, 18, 29, 30, and 52. One ticket bought at Hooked on MT on Colleyville Boulevard in Colleyville beat odds of 1 in 25,827,165 to win the jackpot, but the retailer who sold the winning ticket was listed as Lottery Now. Lottery Now is a third-party lottery ticket courier service that buys and stores physical tickets from licensed Texas Lottery retailers on behalf of players through a third-party app.
"All purchases of Texas Lottery tickets are required to be conducted at licensed brick-and-mortar retailer locations. The extremely high jackpot for Lotto Texas, coupled with the relatively lower odds of winning the jackpot as compared to Powerball or Mega Millions, generated significant interest and participation by purchasing groups to buy large quantities of Lotto Texas tickets over the last few weeks," Lottery Executive Director Gary Grief said in a press release. "This phenomenon is not unprecedented in the lottery industry and has been seen around the world on several occasions in similar situations. Coverage for this particular drawing last Saturday night was greater than 99%."
"Lottery couriers, as these third-party companies are known and as has been reported in the media, have aggressively entered the U.S. lottery market and, while all the lottery tickets involved are purchased at licensed brick-and-mortar retailer locations, the lottery courier business model is not contemplated by current Texas law and is now being examined closely by the Texas Legislature," Grief continued. "It is also possible that some of the lottery couriers operating in Texas assisted various purchasing groups in purchasing large quantities of tickets, particularly in the last few days leading up to last Saturday's drawing."
Lottery Now is ranked as the top retailer for Lotto Texas ticket sales for the drawing of April 22, 2023. Several other similar entities rank in the top ten retailers for this specific draw date.
"To better understand this type of buying activity, you need look no further than our top 10 selling retailers for last Saturday night's Lotto Texas drawing," Grief explained. "Sales for last Friday and Saturday were through the roof, with the vast majority of the buying activity focused at those retailers who appeared to be selling to various purchasing groups. In fact, it appears that the winning ticket was likely bought by one of the purchasing groups. While there is no prohibition on these types of purchases, it certainly generated unprecedented jackpot growth over the last few days of this jackpot run."
It is unknown whether the player opted for a Quick Pick or their own numbers, since the Lottery's system records the purchase as pre-selected numbers when an online ticket butler service buys a ticket on a player's behalf, regardless of whether they really chose pre-selected numbers or a Quick Pick using the third-party app.
This jackpot offers a $95 million annuitized prize. According to the Texas Lottery website, the winning ticket had the cash value prize as the designated payment option at the time of purchase, which amounts to $57,804,374.37 before taxes. The winner has not yet stepped forward to claim their cash prize and has 180 days from the draw date to do so.
"Sales for this Lotto Texas jackpot run were, in total, $138.2 million, which yielded an estimated $50.6 million for public education over this period of time — and that is what the Texas Lottery is all about, generating much-needed revenue for Texas' public schools," Grief advised. "We look forward to meeting our newest jackpot winner. If you have the winning ticket, we encourage you to sign the back of the ticket, put it in a safe place, seek financial and legal advice, and call the Texas Lottery to schedule an appointment to claim the prize."
It's the largest Lotto Texas jackpot in over 12 years. While it takes its sport as the third-largest in the game's history, it has extended the record for the longest recorded Lotto Texas jackpot run since it began as an estimated $5 million prize on Sept. 19, 2022.
2022 saw six Lotto Texas jackpot winners, with the most recent Lotto Texas jackpot winner from Katy winning a $19 million prize from the drawing on Sept. 17, 2022.
The last time the jackpot climbed this high was back on May 29, 2010, when one ticket sold in Dallas and claimed by The Bilmar Trust won a $97 million prize. The largest Lotto Texas jackpot ever won was a $145 million prize from the June 19, 2004 drawing, which was claimed by VOM Enterprises, Ltd.
Had there been no winner for Saturday's drawing, the jackpot would have rolled to an estimated annuitized $96 million.
While only one person emerged from the draw a multi-millionaire, other players from across the state won prizes of their own. There were 311 players who matched five numbers to win a $2,015 second-tier prize, and of those winners, eight won $12,015 by adding the Extra! option to their ticket.
The Lotto Texas jackpot currently sits at $5.25 million for the drawing on Wed., April 26. Lotto Texas drawings take place every Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday at 10:12 pm CT. All Lotto Texas winning numbers, prizes, and odds are published on Lottery Post's Texas Lottery Results page right after each drawing.
Congrats to the winner.
Nice to see that they still Mechanical Balls for the drawings.
Not surprised they won't seem to ever offer on-line purchases and it doesn't seem some Texans are pro-lottery. Nothing surprises me from that state anymore.
It's 2024-2025 I'm a little nervous about. That will be the "Sunset Review" where legislators look at the lottery and determine the lottery's future. The last time we came within an ace of losing the lottery here because a legislator from Southlake tried to put an end to the lottery. He came close to putting together a group that were ready to vote to abolish the lottery until they realized the amount of money that was at stake.
I can't recall all the details except it was a close call. We have legislators in Austin that still don't like the lottery.
However, the issue with the win is that TX Lotto states it was won at a location of 5200 Colleyville Blvd Ste 500 and store never existed and still not there
no banners, nothing and Lotto Now is affiliated with Mido Lottery and it has hit the news that maybe fraud or scam involved
please research on Reddit, Twitter and Tx Lottery media
Something a lil fishy, also close friends live 10 mins away and verified no Lotto Now has ever been there so how u sell online in a nonexistent store?
A worthy Big Win in tune with the Great State of TEXAS!
*** and here l was thinking RCB was going to fess up & tell the forum " Guys & Gals, after all these years-my ship finally came in!"
* I am crushed!
LOL. The closest I came to winning Lotto here in Texas is the gas station across the street from the gas station I bought work pool tickets produce a winning ticket several years ago.
Also, some years ago I bought 2 lines for Tx Lotto, and had all 6 winning numbers. Four on the first line, 2 on the 2nd line.
I hope you get them all next time, congrats to the lucky winner.
There was a massive anomaly in the sales numbers for this drawing - approximately 26 million tickets that didn't match the usual patterns. It's exactly the numbers I'd expect to see if someone managed to pull off the trick of guaranteeing a win by buying every single possible combination. I'm wondering if someone, or some group, used multiple courier services to do exactly that.
I guess you did not understand the article. Texas does offer online lottery ticket sales. It is called Lottery Now. It is an online ticket courier service. The tickets have to be bought at a brick and morter store by a courier than he/she scans the tickets online to the Lottery Now site. This is just like the online courier service <snip>
I understood that quite well.
My point was someone cannot purchase lotto tickets from the convenience of a smart phone, tablet, home computer and not to depend on a courier service like you mentioned.
In KY originally when they offered on-line ticket sales (no courier) that they would not offer Pick 3 or 4 on-line. So slowly that changed even though KLC said they didn't put them in to help Mom and Pop stores. As many of you know I have a good rapport with the KLC...they ALWAYS answer my questions, get IGT machines fixed etc. Being that said I wrote them and asked why can't I purchase say Pick 3 for Mid-day and Evening @ the SAME time. Again they responded it was to help Mom and Pop stores. I believe Stack 47 replied last time I wrote that you can play same #'s for pick 3 or 4 for both draws. My point there was true, but it is not one stop shopping, not that it's a big deal.
Word on the streets is that is was purchased through Mido Lottery online but problem is they own a nonexistent Lotto Now store in Colleyville Tx
close friends live near there for yes and the store don't exist and never did
so what happened here??? Wonder will they investigate
an online store must have a physical store in the state and Mido state they own a store but nvr existed not unless they using another store as a front
This is the issue there is no Lottery Now or Lotto Now store that ever existed at the publicized address
news even spoke on it in an article.
people hv went by that address the next day and no sign in site