Worried that no one wins the lottery in your area? An article from the Charlotte Observer suggests that even though many ticket buyers think more prizes are won in certain areas that prizes are won pretty evenly around the state.
Lottery spokeswoman Pam Walker says "It doesn't matter where you buy the ticket or what terminal prints out your ticket. The odds are the same everywhere. She also states "Sometimes people may not hear about the winners and they think there aren't any winners in their area. We turn around and pull up the names of people who have won in their area and they say, ‘Oh, OK. I didn't know about that.'”
The lottery organization says also that more prize money was added some time ago to address an issue where buyers across the state's borders had complained that winnings for tickets from the state were lower than from tickets bought for other states lotteries.
I can only speak for myself, but we have been buying lottery tickets in both Virginia and North Carolina since those lotteries were started and the prizes have always been won by others and most of the time in distant areas. Oh I forgot... we did win once recently - we won $20 with one of the million dollar scratch off tickets...
Charlotte Observer
June 15, 2008
Mark Johnson, staff writer
Any secrets to winning N.C. lottery?
Perception isn't reality – data show that winning tickets are spread pretty evenly across the state.
For some N.C. lottery players, the tickets seem to be greener on the other side of the state.
Lori Swift handles billing for a group of radiologists in Boone. She grew convinced – and frustrated – that no one in the mountains seemed to win in the lottery and decided to test her theory. She bought $20 worth of scratch tickets one day last month.
“Nada, nothing, not even a free ticket,” she said. “Very few here in the high country since the lottery started have gotten anything. You check the winners page (on the lottery Web site) and it's: Clinton, Wake Forest, Winston(-Salem), Charlotte, Raleigh.”
She fired off an e-mail to the lottery, complaining.
Lottery data suggest it's all a matter of perspective, that players in the west and east, city and country win about the same amount.
Lottery officials last year boosted the amount of money devoted to prizes to help erase the accurate reputation that N.C. lottery scratch tickets didn't win as often as neighboring states.
When it comes to the incorrect perception, though, that location within the state affects a player's chances, the lottery is responding with information instead of money.
Three weeks after Swift's e-mail from the west, another player e-mailed from Belhaven, on the eastern end of the state.
“We do like to play down here on the coast … Seems like, though, (no) one wins anything,” the writer complained without giving a name.
The top 10 grievances that come tumbling into lottery headquarters include gripes that the winning tickets all show up somewhere else. Players in the west say the prizes are in the east and vice versa. City players say rural players win, while rural players complain of a perpetual prize drought.
“It doesn't matter where you buy the ticket or what terminal prints out your ticket,” said lottery spokeswoman Pam Walker. “The odds are the same everywhere.”
In the mountains of Watauga County, where Swift works, retailers sold $2.3 million worth of lottery tickets between last July and the end of last month, according to lottery data. The lottery awarded $1.1 million in prizes in the same county, meaning players won 46 cents for every dollar played.
Down East on the Pamlico River, in Beaufort County, the lottery also paid out 46 cents per dollar played. That's the home county for the Belhaven player who e-mailed the lottery. Retailers there sold $7.7 million in tickets. Prizes in the county totaled $3.5 million during the same 11-month period.
Those county figures do not include some of the largest prizes that the lottery's regional offices paid by check – another $79.3 million statewide. Those prizes typically are $600 or larger.
“Sometimes people may not hear about the winners and they think there aren't any winners in their area,” Walker said. “We turn around and pull up the names of people who have won in their area and they say, ‘Oh, OK. I didn't know about that.'”
Players' sense of geographic bias may be more a matter of isolated information than irrational urban – or rural – legend. A news release from the lottery this week, for example, listed 15 winners who picked up between $5,000 and $150,000.
Ten of them, or two-thirds, hailed from Greensboro or points east.
Erik Pasley, a Mazda auto parts supplier from Matthews, won $50,000 in April. Pasley grew up in Hampstead, near Topsail Island on the coast, and was visiting there Memorial Day weekend when he stopped at a convenience store to buy tickets. Another customer, who knew Pasley, remarked aloud about his good fortune near Charlotte.
“A couple people (in line) that live down there said, ‘We don't know anyone who's won,'” Pasley said. “‘Nobody here wins.'”
Since the lottery's debut two years ago, 27 players from Hampstead have won at least $600, according to lottery data. Of those, one won $200,000, another won $10,000 and 19 won $1,000. Original article...
