With 10 days to go, the Massachusetts Lottery has sold just a fifth of the tickets for a $10 million New Year’s Day raffle, which could mean millions of dollars in losses for the agency and less money for cities and towns unless sales pick up dramatically.
The Lottery has committed to paying out the full $10 million prize pot — $7 million to the grand prize winner, a $1 million second prize, and $2 million worth of $50,000 and $1,000 prizes – even if it falls short of its target of selling 1 million $20 tickets.
The game began on Oct. 30 and will end on Dec. 31. As of today, a little more than 211,000 tickets had been sold. The Lottery needs to sell 500,000 tickets just to cover the cost of prize money. It also has to pay commissions and bonuses to agents and cover its own costs before cities and towns will see any money.
The Lottery had a bad experience the last time it tried a sweepstakes game in 2007. The $20 “Star Spangled Sweepstakes” promised a total of $40 million in prize money. Lottery officials had planned on selling 4 million tickets, which would have pumped an additional $32 million back to cities and towns had they all sold. But only 1.3 million tickets ended up being purchased and the Lottery ended up losing $12 million on the game, leaving less money for cities and towns.
Lottery Executive Director Paul R. Sternburg says he is confident ticket sales for the New Year’s Day raffle will reach the million-ticket mark as Christmas approaches and customers buy them as gifts. He says radio and possibly TV advertising will be used to alert customers that the raffle drawing date is fast approaching. He says customers accustomed to instant scratch tickets often take awhile to warm up to a game where the outcome isn’t known until a later date.
“They’re used to that instant gratification,” says Sternburg, who took over as executive director in January. “There is no urgency to buy until you get down to the last week or two.”
One upside from the slow sales is better odds for those who play. If all tickets are sold, the odds of winning the grand prize or the second prize are 1 million to 1. If only 500,000 tickets are sold, the odds are cut in half to 500,000 to 1. By comparison, the odds for winning a $1 million prize on a scratch ticket are 4 million to 1.
Despite optimism by Lottery officials, several agents say they doubt the Lottery will meet its goal of selling 1 million tickets.
“I just don’t think it’s caught on,” says David McGough, owner of Little Comfort General Store in Whitman, where three $1 million winning tickets have been sold over the years. “I’ve mentioned it to all the customers but we’re a pretty big Lottery store and we haven’t sold that many. It’s going to be tight. It was a short window for people to buy them.”
Kim Johnson, a clerk at the Court Street Market in Brockton, says the store has only sold four or five of the tickets, including one she bought. “Times are tough,” says Johnson. “To spend $20 on a lottery raffle, that’s a bit extreme. I’ve been in plenty of other stores and I don’t see anyone buying one.”
Not all agents are seeing slow sales. Tony Amico, owner of Ted’s Stateline Mobil in Methuen, the top Lottery agent for years, says he has sold about 2,000 of the tickets so far and expects them to keep flying out the door.
“I know I’m doing my share,” says Amico. “If every agent sells 100 to 150 tickets, they’re all sold. I figured everyone was doing their share. People are coming in specifically to buy that. We have signs all over the place. We’re pretty successful.”
Beth Bresnahan, the Lottery’s director of communications, says other states have been successful in running raffle-type games and there is no reason to believe that Massachusetts, with one of the country’s most successful lotteries, cannot have similar results. She said lottery officials learned from the mistakes of the “Star Spangled Sweepstakes.”
“We’re confident the game is a good game, one that provides the best odds ever for a prize this size,” she says. “It is a newer concept to Massachusetts lottery players. The [Star Spangled] sweepstakes sold approximately 1.3 million tickets. To say that was not a success is misleading. We learned from that lesson that 4 million tickets was a very lofty goal.”
