SACRAMENTO – The California Lottery recently embarked on a promotion that was a first-of-its-kind in California, one where the result was tied to a horse race, the Breeders’ Cup, known to some as the “Superbowl of horse racing.”
Donald Faimann was the top prize winner in the promotion, winning $10,000. Faimann is a small business owner from Salinas who never paid much attention to horse racing before. “I love to watch them race, but I never bet on them,” he explained. Faimann has been married almost 30 years and he and his wife have run Club 19 for the past 28 years. Club 19 provides golfers a discount on greens fees at golf courses across the country. Before owning his own business, Faimann was the director of the American Cancer Society for 25 years. He plans to invest his prize.
California Lottery Director Joan Borucki was able to give Faimann the news herself, to which Faimann exclaimed, “Holy cow! I’ve never won anything before.”
Borucki later said, “It was such a thrill to be able to tell a player firsthand that they had won. This is the part of my job I love the most!”
There were 350 winners for this promotion. Results can be viewed on the Lottery’s Web site at www.calottery.com/breederscup.
The Breeders’ Cup promotion was highly successful with more than 1 million entries. The Lottery will have more promotions similar to this one, which give more players, more chances to win prizes by entering second-chance drawings. During this promotion, players were randomly assigned horses entered in the Breeders’ Cup and even if players weren’t assigned the race favorite, Curlin, everyone had the same chance to win in the Lottery promotion.
More than 95 cents of every Lottery dollar is returned to the community in the form of contributions to education, prizes and retail commissions. The California Lottery contributes at least 34 cents of every dollar that players spend on Lottery products to public education and returns more than 50 percent of sales to players in the form of prizes. Since its inception in 1985, the Lottery has contributed nearly $21 billion to California schools out of total sales of more than $56 billion. Retailers benefit too, earning $3.6 billion in compensation since 1985.