A day doesn't go by without a customer asking Duc Lu when he's going to start selling the Mega Millions lottery tickets.
"They say, `When do they come in?' I say, `Don't worry, you come in, I'll tell you what day they come out,' " said Lu, 47, who has run the HLD Food Mart on Koenig Lane for 18 years.
Lu hasn't sold a winning lottery ticket, but it hasn't discouraged people from making his store the No. 1 retailer for Texas Lotto and scratch-off ticket sales in Austin. He attributes his high sales to making it a point to ask each customer if they want to buy a lottery ticket.
He doesn't believe his customers' lack of success will dissuade them from buying Mega Millions tickets when they go on sale Wednesday. The first drawing will be Friday.
The Mega Millions game will kick off with a 5:45 a.m. Wednesday news conference at a Fiesta Food Mart in central Austin, with ticket sales beginning at 6 a.m.
The Texas Lottery Commission is hoping Texas' inclusion in the 10-state multimillion-dollar drawing will revive sagging Texas Lotto sales, which dropped 11.39 percent last year.
But commission officials also expect the Mega Millions lottery to cut into Texas Lotto sales by as much as 21 percent.
In other states, Mega Millions "cannibalized" as much as 30 to 40 percent of existing lottery drawings, said Texas Lottery Commission Executive Director Reagan Greer. The same, he said, could happen in Texas.
"We're anticipating it is going to have an effect on Texas Lotto," Greer said.
He said the lottery commission will monitor ticket sales for a minimum of the next several months and review reports on sales at the monthly commission meetings.
The commission had hoped that changing the Texas Lotto matrix would result in bigger jackpots and induce more ticket sales. But the change from a system of picking six numbers from a field of 54 to picking five numbers from a field of 44 and a single number from another field of 44 did not have the impact intended.
The commission also will monitor other ticket sales such as Texas Two Step and Cash Five. But, he said, overall ticket sales, including scratch-offs, which account for 70 percent of all sales, have risen by 4 percent.
About 30 percent of the lottery sales volume is in the Houston area.
Greer hopes the separate drawing dates for Mega Millions and Texas Lotto will help minimize their impact on each other's ticket sales. Mega Millions drawings will be on Tuesdays and Fridays; Texas Lotto drawings are on Wednesdays and Saturdays.
When Texas went shopping around for a multistate lottery earlier this year, Greer said he chose Mega Millions because the drawing is estimated to raise $121.6 million in net revenues over the next five years.
Lottery analysts estimate Mega Millions will raise nearly $92 million for Texas' Foundation School Fund by Aug. 31, 2004.
Also, unlike Powerball, another multistate lottery, Mega Millions is played in some of the largest states in the country. Other states participating in Mega Millions are Georgia, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Virginia and Washington.
The Legislature paved the way for a multistate lottery during the last session to meet the demand for lottery drawings with bigger jackpots.
Lottery officials estimate that Mega Millions jackpots, which start at $10 million, can reach $100 million four times a year and could reach $400 million every two or three years.
In the past year, Mega Millions jackpots have averaged $42.3 million. The largest Mega Millions jackpot was $183 million. Today's jackpot is an estimated $33 million.
Also, Texans will have a "Megaplier" option to the Mega Millions drawing that doubles, triples or quadruples non-jackpot prizes. The Megaplier option does not apply to the jackpot, in which a player correctly picks five numbers from a field of 52 and a single number from a field of 52.
TX, like NY, will require Mega Millions players to choose cash/annuity when they PLAY; the choice CANNOT be changed should the jackpot be hit.