SACRAMENTO, March 16, 2006 — California State Lottery officials announced at the regular meeting of the Lottery Commission that MEGA Millions game sales are continuing to rise. Sales for the game have been growing since November 2005 when a group of Kaiser employees won a $315 MEGA Millions jackpot. For the big jackpots sales for MEGA Millions nearly doubled from $8.6 million November 7-11, 2005 to $17.3 million from February 24-28, 2006 when similar size jackpot amounts were in play.
Playership is up significantly for recent MEGA Million jackpots as well. Fifteen percent of California adults bought a ticket for the jackpot in February of 2006 compared to just 7% of adults for a similar size jackpot in November of 2005. Sales and playership figures are for the same four-day sale periods for jackpot draws on November 11, 2005 and February 28, 2006.
“Upward sales trends are even stronger for bigger jackpots, and we anticipate Lotto-style game products will continue to grow through the end of this fiscal year”, said Director of Marketing Jim Hasegawa. “As Californians become more familiar with MEGA Millions the game’s popularity will continue to grow with every large jackpot”.
Since MEGA Millions began Californians have helped to contribute $110.7 million to public schools from MEGA Millions sales alone. From each dollar spent on a MEGA Millions ticket, 34 cents of every ticket sold in California goes to California’s public schools, regardless of where the jackpot winning ticket is sold.