Mass. Lottery ends some scratch ticket games before grand prizes paid out

Nov 29, 2017, 9:36 pm (23 comments)

Massachusetts Lottery

Includes video report

BOSTON — It's an enticing gamble: a few bucks for a chance to win $1 million, $4 million, or more. But all of those big, bright prize amounts we see stamped on scratch tickets won't necessarily be given away.

Lottery players at Kiki's Kwik Mart in Brighton, Massachusetts, did not receive this news well. "It's not really fair is it," replied one frequent player. And another told us "it's a little unfair they can pull the million and not put it back into the game that people have spent money on over the years."

But the Massachusetts State Lottery can end the game before all those grand prizes are paid out. "It's never our intention to end a game early," explained Christian Teja, Massachusetts State Lottery Director of Communications.

Despite that intention, it can happen. "In most cases an instant game remains on sale until all grand prizes are claimed or until all the tickets are sold," she said. But a CBS investigation found 11 instant games that have recently been pulled and they all have at least one grand prize that may never be claimed.

"Billion Dollar Bonanza" was pulled for a lack of sales. There are still two $10 million and 34 $1 million prizes out there. The last day players can claim a prize related to this game is March 23, 2018.

"Billion Dollar Blockbuster" was also pulled for a lack of sales. One $10 million prize and nine $1 million prizes have not been claimed. The last day players can claim a prize connected to this game is also March 23rd.  There is also a second chance drawing connected to these scratch tickets that can't be played until the game is over. That was also a factor in deciding to end these games.

Another reason to pull a scratch ticket is that the game sold out. That was the case with "$1 Million Cashword."  There are five $1 million prizes that might never be collected.  The last day to claim a prize for this game is February 23, 2018. Those winning tickets could be in the trash or a junk drawer, there's no way to know.  "For consumer confidence and the security and integrity of our games we do not know where these winning tickets are issued or even if they are sold," explained Teja.

If customers do want to know how many grand prizes are still available before buying a ticket the information is easy to find on the lottery's website.  And the lottery insists they are not betting against the players.  "Our goal is to sell as many tickets as possible and to have as many winners as possible," said Teja.

The lottery introduces about 30 new scratch tickets every year and older games are constantly being retired. Once the end of a game is announced players have one year to come forward and cash in.

VIDEO: Watch the report

CBS

Comments

fellini

The cost of the scratch off ticket could be a reason that the scratch off ticket didn't sell that well.

music*'s avatarmusic*

Eek  I will stick with the draw games. Power Ball and Mega Millions.

beret32

The article headline should be "State appropriately runs their lottery". The article tries to make it sound like a scandal, but the state is doing what it's supposed to:

- Stopping sales if the tickets aren't selling. The limited retail space should be filled with merchandise that is selling. That retail space costs the retailers money. And it costs the state for sales lost to other merchandise that would sell.

- Stopping sales if they are sold out. Well of course!

- They can't comment on where the winning tickets are because they don't know, which they shouldn't.

- They publish the number of unclaimed prizes.

The article oddly didn't mention that, I believe, many state lotteries know how many winners they've distributed, even if they don't know where. And they know if this number is less than the number that would eventually be distributed if all tickets were distributed. That part of the story would be more interesting.

fellini

How much does the Billion Dollar Bonanza scratch off cost?

beret32

Quote: Originally posted by fellini on Nov 30, 2017

How much does the Billion Dollar Bonanza scratch off cost?

The Massachusetts lottery page has them listed for $20.

Dracos

Quote: Originally posted by beret32 on Nov 30, 2017

The article headline should be "State appropriately runs their lottery". The article tries to make it sound like a scandal, but the state is doing what it's supposed to:

- Stopping sales if the tickets aren't selling. The limited retail space should be filled with merchandise that is selling. That retail space costs the retailers money. And it costs the state for sales lost to other merchandise that would sell.

- Stopping sales if they are sold out. Well of course!

- They can't comment on where the winning tickets are because they don't know, which they shouldn't.

- They publish the number of unclaimed prizes.

The article oddly didn't mention that, I believe, many state lotteries know how many winners they've distributed, even if they don't know where. And they know if this number is less than the number that would eventually be distributed if all tickets were distributed. That part of the story would be more interesting.

The reduction in sales is partially due to how rapidly some sales are releasing games. When a state releases 4-5 new scratch games a month it is only natural that the games are going to start competing for sales and shelf life.  FL Lottery reduces $5 tickets so often that this happens with those games very often. The $25 game is released yearly, so at least it isn't competing with other tickets. We have a game that's active and been out since 2010.

 Some lotteries pick up and destroy active books of games upon a retailer requesting to send it back to make space for newer games. They don't account for the tickets or prizes lost, thus, potentially affecting the possibility of these grand prizes being found. People are too quick to assume that unclaimed grand prizes means people threw away tickets. That's presumptuous, and neglects to take into account the operational practices of some lotteries which can ultimately affect whether some of these grand prizes are found.

Soledad

Happens all the time in New York. Don't forget the first people to become rich are the people running it. Scratch offs are a good way to take in a reality check though. Dreams and all that. They're usually the first way people start to play, so really if anything they're just a marketing tool. Sure also, with some grand prize winners here and there who's to say anything.

Ron5995

Glad to see mainstream media investigate this. Sales of instant scratch offs far exceeds that of all numbers games combined, including Mega Millions and Powerball, for many lotteries. For PA Lottery, instant scratch offs account for around 68% of all sales. Or to put another way, $2 of every $3 wagered.

While numbers rigging (ie. Hot Lotto) scandals have received much press, there's likely far more cheating of players happening in the instant scratch off realm. For all U.S. lotteries combined, closing instant scratch off games early and other questionable activity (ie. insiders buying known winning packs; pulling individual packs known to contain a top prize winner) could potentially be shorting players hundreds of millions of dollars per year.

Another way to potentially cheat players is "reordering" more of a particular instant scratch off game. Inflates the top remaining prize counts allowing for more tickets to be sold from current ticket stock that may contain few, if any, top prize winners. Very sneaky tactic I've not seen discussed outside of my own posts. Would love to see some investigative reporting on "reordering".

Christian Teja, Massachusetts State Lottery Director of Communications says:

"For consumer confidence and the security and integrity of our games we do not know where these winning tickets are issued or even if they are sold."

Don't believe that for a second. The lottery and/or its vendor(s) know 1. what packs contain top prize winners and 2. where those packs currently are. To be fair, depending on the lottery, no one entity may know both 1 and 2. However, it's most probable that the information is known, regardless. It's generally not a total mystery as he makes it out to be.

Top prizes remaining lists are helpful, but can be deceiving. It's highly likely some so called remaining top prizes have actually already been sold, but not yet claimed (player could be waiting to cash it in or mistakenly trashed it). A few U.S. lotteries actually point this out in the fine print, but most don't even bother. While the lottery likely knows, they won't share that information. Resulting in some players chasing phantom remaining top prize tickets that aren't available anymore.

beret32

Quote: Originally posted by Ron5995 on Nov 30, 2017

Glad to see mainstream media investigate this. Sales of instant scratch offs far exceeds that of all numbers games combined, including Mega Millions and Powerball, for many lotteries. For PA Lottery, instant scratch offs account for around 68% of all sales. Or to put another way, $2 of every $3 wagered.

While numbers rigging (ie. Hot Lotto) scandals have received much press, there's likely far more cheating of players happening in the instant scratch off realm. For all U.S. lotteries combined, closing instant scratch off games early and other questionable activity (ie. insiders buying known winning packs; pulling individual packs known to contain a top prize winner) could potentially be shorting players hundreds of millions of dollars per year.

Another way to potentially cheat players is "reordering" more of a particular instant scratch off game. Inflates the top remaining prize counts allowing for more tickets to be sold from current ticket stock that may contain few, if any, top prize winners. Very sneaky tactic I've not seen discussed outside of my own posts. Would love to see some investigative reporting on "reordering".

Christian Teja, Massachusetts State Lottery Director of Communications says:

"For consumer confidence and the security and integrity of our games we do not know where these winning tickets are issued or even if they are sold."

Don't believe that for a second. The lottery and/or its vendor(s) know 1. what packs contain top prize winners and 2. where those packs currently are. To be fair, depending on the lottery, no one entity may know both 1 and 2. However, it's most probable that the information is known, regardless. It's generally not a total mystery as he makes it out to be.

Top prizes remaining lists are helpful, but can be deceiving. It's highly likely some so called remaining top prizes have actually already been sold, but not yet claimed (player could be waiting to cash it in or mistakenly trashed it). A few U.S. lotteries actually point this out in the fine print, but most don't even bother. While the lottery likely knows, they won't share that information. Resulting in some players chasing phantom remaining top prize tickets that aren't available anymore.

I'm in favor of investigating suspicious activity, but closing games "early" isn't suspicious. It's necessary. The state can't be forced to print and distribute every ticket. They can't force retailers to buy them. Even if they were somehow forced to distribute all of them they could lose money if the tickets refuse to sell. And then what? Do they stop creating new games because there is no retail space left? Retailers can't discount the price of the tickets to move the merchandise (because then retailers would face competitive price pressure to lower all ticket prices).

As I mentioned the more interesting story revolves around how they ensure no one knows where the winners are. It would be interesting to get more details, but I'm not sure if state lotteries talk about that much.

positano

"[...]
The article oddly didn't mention that, I believe, many state lotteries know how many winners they've distributed, even if they don't know where. And they know if this number is less than the number that would eventually be distributed if all tickets were distributed. That part of the story would be more interesting."

I can assure you that Lotteries do NOT know how many winners they've distribuited. They order the game printed from one of their vendors, who apply its own "randomization" algorithm that prints the number of required tickets randomly distribuiting top prizes in the batch. But nobody knows where the top prizes are, and it is good like this, otherwise "somebody" would be able to go and buy all packs distribuited to "that" specific retailer and get the winning tickets. When the tickets are checked, each ticket has a unique code that will tell if that ticket is a winner or not, but nowhere there is the information about which pack contains the unique code used for awarding prizes ....

positano

> Glad to see mainstream media investigate this. [...]

> While numbers rigging (ie. Hot Lotto) scandals have received much press, there's likely far more cheating of players happening in the instant      > scratch off realm. For all U.S. lotteries combined, closing instant scratch off games early and other questionable activity (ie. insiders buying        > known winning packs; pulling individual packs known to contain a top prize winner) could potentially be shorting players hundreds of millions   > of dollars per year.

I can assure the above is not true. It would be too easy to cheat, if anybody in the Lottery knew where winning tickets are. This is an information not available to anybody, neither in the Lottery nor at the vendor that printed the game. Vendors have quite sophisticated security techniques, that make "printing an instant game" quite a difficult business, which is why there are only (at least in the US) 3 qualified vendors for that. Things such as "known winning packs" do NOT exist. 

> Another way to potentially cheat players is "reordering" more of a particular instant scratch off game.

This is NOT true either. There are specific rule for "reordering. For example if a game have 2 millions tickets and say 4 top prizes, it can be reordered only in batches of half a million tickets. So the "reordered batch" has the exact same prize structure and probabilities of winning as the original batch, even if the "reordered quantity" is smaller. If the lottery chose a "minimum reordered quantity" different that 0.5 million complying with the original prize structure would be impossible, but this is forbidden and it is not done. Lottery would lose consumers' confidence if they cheated, so they don't do it, and try to prevent as much as possible anybody to cheat.

The most typical "cheating" happens at the retailer, when a customer returns a winning ticket to check if it is a winner, and the retailer cheats and says that it is not a winner., to cash the ticket herself. Or sometimes, but this is very rare ... printing issues can allow smart retailers to understand if a ticket is a winner before it is scratched (sometimes through some "manipulation"). But this latter cases are very rare, as security tests try to prevent that ..... 

Ron5995

Quote: Originally posted by beret32 on Nov 30, 2017

I'm in favor of investigating suspicious activity, but closing games "early" isn't suspicious. It's necessary. The state can't be forced to print and distribute every ticket. They can't force retailers to buy them. Even if they were somehow forced to distribute all of them they could lose money if the tickets refuse to sell. And then what? Do they stop creating new games because there is no retail space left? Retailers can't discount the price of the tickets to move the merchandise (because then retailers would face competitive price pressure to lower all ticket prices).

As I mentioned the more interesting story revolves around how they ensure no one knows where the winners are. It would be interesting to get more details, but I'm not sure if state lotteries talk about that much.

Closing games is very suspicious. While it's understandable that there's limited retailing space, there's an obligation to allow for a decent amount of sell-through to better ensure a fair amount of winnings is returned to the players. Failure to do so could reduce overall payback to far below the advertised amount (ie. 60%-75% typical). If a lottery is finding itself with too much inventory, they need to boost marketing and/or reduce the number of game offerings.

Bleudog101

If you go to their website, and I'm sure other state's too, it has in fine print the amount of tickets that are to be sold for their respective odds.  It is no small number either so when I go home to Mass. I don't play scratchers and really never here in KY or IN either.

Bleudog101

Quote: Originally posted by Bleudog101 on Nov 30, 2017

If you go to their website, and I'm sure other state's too, it has in fine print the amount of tickets that are to be sold for their respective odds.  It is no small number either so when I go home to Mass. I don't play scratchers and really never here in KY or IN either.

Newest Christmas scratcher there when you pull up available prizes says on bottom of page based on sales of 12,000,000 tickets, actually higher than that but you get the drift.

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