COVID-19 is impacting lottery sales to the point where the next time the Powerball jackpot is won and the jackpot resets, it’ll start at 20 million dollars as opposed to 40 million.
Louisiana Lottery spokesperson Kim Chopin says, for example, their March 11th Powerball Wednesday night drawing generated 265,000 dollars, “this past Wednesday’s draw on the 25th, sales were 200,000 dollars. So that’s a 65 thousand dollar hit on a single day in terms of what would normally be expected,” says Chopin.
35 percent of sales generated by the lotto are used to fund K-12 education.
The governor’s order to close all state offices includes lotto offices, and Chopin says if you were one of Wednesday’s lucky 10,000 dollar winners, you can’t claim your money, yet.
“If you are hanging on to one of those tickets then you are just going to need to put it in a safe place, sign the back of it, and we will see you as soon as we can,” says Chopin.
They’ve also extended the expiration deadline for claiming prizes on all previous winning tickets by 90 days.
Scratch-off players take note, Chopin says they won’t be able to ship any more scratch-offs until state offices reopen.
“We shipped our last amount of scratch-off tickets from our distribution center Monday, anticipating that we would not be shipping tickets for another three weeks,” says Chopin.
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