Scratching the surface
Colorado Lottery is win-win-win for outdoors, business and lucky players
BY PETER JONES
NEWS EDITOR
Colin Waters of the Colorado Lottery, makes a winning presentation last week at Meridian Englewood for the Greater Englewood Chamber of Commerce: “We see a lot of attorneys come on behalf of their clients. … You may want to call [your trust] We’re Rich Now and Good Luck Finding Us.”
Not everything you may picture about the Colorado Lottery is reality.
If the word Powerball conjures images of numbered globes bouncing about a glass box—think again. Meet the 21st century’s random number generator.“If you go down to our office in Pueblo, there is literally an office with a computer in it that is not connected to the internet whatsoever,” explained Colin Waters, the lottery’s community-relations specialist.
Like election watchdogs, the lottery’s drawing manager and an audit team enter the number-generating room at the same time—just moments before someone’s life is potentially changed forever by the random luck of the computer’sdraw.
“We see a lot of attorneys come on behalf of their clients,” Waters said of big winners, who often create trusts to hide their identities from fortune seekers. “… Let’s say you’re the Penn Trust. … Now depending on where you live and what your name is, people may be able to figure that out. So, you may want to call it We’re Rich Now and Good Luck Finding Us [Trust].”
No one attending the Oct. 10 breakfast for the Greater Englewood Chamber of Commerce had any such problems to worry about after guest speaker Waters handed out several dozen free “A Latte Money” cards to the group.
“If it’s a scratch ticket in Colorado, it’s going to be a pun,” he warned before business leaders scratched away on their coffee-scented cards.
Though valued up to $5,000, the room’s winners were not so lucky on this day, though a few, including this reporter, picked up a buck or two.
Much has changed—not necessarily your odds of winning big—since voters approved the multi-game Colorado Lottery in 1980, though one person has taken home $10,000 three times, Waters said.
Although the self-funded sweepstakes still exclusively support the state’s outdoors, the games themselves have gotten more high-tech with a Colorado Lottery app being the latest innovation in this convenience-store roulette.
“It’s becoming more and more sophisticated as the days go by,” Waters said. “… It tells you what top prizes are running and on what games. It also allows you to scratch your non-winning tickets, and that goes into a secondary drawing.”
Last year, Coloradans and others spent more than $558 million on the state’s lottery games, netting—after winnings and expenses—more than $130 million in proceeds for the Rocky Mountain state’s parks, open spaces and recreation amenities, including many in Arapahoe County. In August, the River Run Trailhead Park “surfing spot” won the Lottery’s Starburst Award for “excellent use of lottery funds.”
A little-known fact is that when a big winner gets a check, so does the retailer who issued the winning ticket. On average, lottery-participating stores earn about $14,500 each year in commissions, plus bonuses for selling to top winners.
“That store called Lucky Me convenience in Grand Junction received a $50,000 check—and that’s an independent retailer,” Waters said.
Although the Colorado Lottery offers an assortment of jackpot games, the simple scratch-card impulse games have always been the most popular, Waters said.
“For whatever reason that is, that’s how people have always thought of the lottery—and that’s how it always will be,” he said.
