The Massachusetts State Lottery announced its largest scratch ticket prize offered in history — a $50 scratch ticket with a grand prize of $25 million. Winning tickets will have a minimum prize of at least $100.
The “Billion Dollar Extravaganza” scratch ticket will be available for purchase on Tuesday, Feb. 7. It will offer over $1 billion in total lottery winnings, featuring three $25 million prizes, five $2 million prizes and 15 $1 million prizes available to win.
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The lottery also said its overall prize payout was 82%, the amount of the prize turned over to the winner, which is higher than any other game offered by the Massachusetts Lottery. The overall odds of winning a prize in the game are 1 in 4.1, the lottery said.
“As the Lottery’s 50th anniversary celebration approaches the end, what better time to introduce the $50 ticket to begin our next 50 years!” said State Treasurer Deborah B. Goldberg, chair of the Massachusetts State Lottery Commission.
“Our customers had been requesting this ticket for some time. After careful consideration, the Lottery has what we believe will provide them with the entirely new level of excitement they have been seeking,” Goldberg said.
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Massachusetts joins more than a dozen other state lotteries offering a $50 ticket. The previously highest-priced scratch ticket available in Massachusetts was $30, and was first introduced in 2014.
The lottery expects to exceed total sales from the “Billion Dollar Extravaganza” to exceed $1.5 billion from its print run of 30.2 million tickets, and stated profits are returned to all 351 cities in towns in the state in the “form of unrestricted local aid.”
“Billion Dollar Extravaganza is the result of extensive research and testing over the course of several years,” said Mark William Bracken, interim executive director of the Massachusetts State Lottery. “With an unprecedented top prize of $25 million and a number of ‘best ever’ features, this ticket gives customers a value consistent with its price point.”
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The lottery stated the game has a match style of 10 “winning numbers” and 35 “your numbers.” All winning tickets have a minimum prize of $100, and there are multiplier symbols ranging from 5X to 500X in the “your numbers” spots to increase winning prizes. The lottery called “Billion Dollar Extravaganza” ticket “the best chance to win $500 and $1,000 prizes in Mass Lottery history.”
The game also has 10 second-chance drawings, so players can enter non-winning tickets for the chance to win cash prizes ranging from $100 to $50,000. For each of the 10 drawings, the lottery said 15 $50,000 prizes, 10 $1,000 prizes, 75 $500 prizes and 300 $100 prizes will be awarded.
According to the lottery, Massachusetts was the first state to create the scratch ticket game in May of 1974. It released a $1 ticket called “The Instant Game,” and the lottery said the invention “revolutionized the industry and established Massachusetts as a lottery innovator.”
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The Massachusetts State Lottery said it has generated over $143 billion in revenue, awarded $100 billion in prizes, returned over $31 billion in profit to the state for local aid and paid over $8 billion in commissions and bonuses to retailers across the state since its first ticket sale on March 22, 1972.
The announcement of the ticket comes after the Massachusetts State Lottery stated its concerns over low scratch ticket sales and lottery revenue for the state. According to lottery officials, lottery ticket sales are $22.5 million below where they should be for the 2023 fiscal year.
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