Powerball begins in Tennessee with $90 million jackpot
NASHVILLE (AP) — After the first day of sales, Tennessee Lottery officials are feeling lucky about their timing for joining the multistate Powerball game.
Powerball tickets went on sale in Tennessee for the first time Monday, and by 5 p.m. CDT about $500,000 in ticket sales had been recorded, said lottery CEO and president Rebecca Paul.
The estimated jackpot for Wednesday night’s drawing was expected to climb to at least $90 million.
“People wanted the opportunity to participate in a national event and win big dollars. This week somebody has a chance to win $90 million,” said state Sen. Steve Cohen, who led the effort to change the state constitution to allow the lottery.
“Nobody’s got a real good chance because earlier this morning I bought the winning ticket,” he said.
Cohen, a Memphis Democrat, bought five tickets earlier in the day and one at an opening ceremony Monday. He picked numbers to correspond with the stars of the Memphis Grizzlies, who are in the NBA playoffs this week.
Tennessee joins 25 other states, Washington, D.C., and the U.S. Virgin Islands in the nation’s largest multistate lottery game. The highest jackpot ever for the game was $314.9 million.
“I played (Powerball) in Michigan when I bought tickets,” said Chris Marsh, who was pumping gas at a Nashville convenience store. “The jackpot then was way up there, like $200 million.”
Marsh, who said he’s spent as much as $15 at a time playing Tennessee Lottery scratchoff games, said he would play again if jackpots were around $100 million and may play other games more now that the state offers Powerball.
“I used to play a lot when the lottery first came here, mainly on Fridays because it was payday,” he said.
Mark Young, a Florida native who lives in Nashville, said he didn’t like the first games introduced by the Tennessee Lottery, but would be more inclined to play Powerball when the jackpots get large.
“Here the games rolled out very slowly and started with the stupid scratchoff games,” he said. “In Florida, they had a great jackpot. It doubled nearly every week.”
Tennessee offers 19 scratchoff games and one pingpong-ball-style drawing. While those have been successful, the top prizes range from $500 to $1 million.
For a $1 Powerball ticket, players choose five numbers from 1 to 53, plus a sixth number from 1 to 42.
The minimum jackpot is $10 million, which grows each week until there is a winner. Overall odds of hitting the jackpot are one in more than 120 million.
Numbers are drawn on Wednesday and Saturday nights.
Tennessee Lottery CEO Rebecca Paul said nearly $64 million had been raised toward the $88 million goal for the first year of the lottery scholarship program with three months to go in the fiscal year. The money will pay for an estimated 65,000 students who expected to attend Tennessee colleges and universities this fall on the scholarship.
Powerball is expected to generate another $100 million a year — $30 million for the scholarship program.
The state’s Powerball slogan is “Just Imagine,” and that’s something people could easily do with $90 million.
“I’m not hung up on homes and cars,” Young said. “I’d just travel — a lot.”
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On the Net:
http://www.tnlottery.com
http://www.powerball.com/
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The Tennessean, http://www.tennessean.com, contributed to this report.