People across the Natural State are hoping they're holding a winning ticket. More than 200,000 lottery raffle tickets sold on Wednesday alone.
There are only 500,000 raffle tickets available. Less than 5,000 were left at 9:00 Wednesday night. The tickets were sold out before midnight Wednesday.
Julie Baldridge with the Arkansas Scholarship Lottery says the Arkansas Million Dollar Raffle tickets sold about 1,000 tickets an hour at $10 a pop.
Doug Pinkerton, owner of the Point Convenience Store in Fort Smith says people have been lining up all day to buy the raffle tickets.
“Oh yeah, everyone is participating,” says Pinkerton. “Everybody old enough to buy a ticket is buying a ticket right now.”
Lottery officials say raffle sales are up to more than $4.9 million and $2.6 million go out in prizes.
There are two $1,000,000 tickets. The odds of winning one are 1 in 250,000.
Prizes to be drawn Wednesday and will also include 540 $1,000 winners, 600 $100 winners, and 20,000 people will win an instant win of $20.
About a million dollars of the revenue from the lottery raffle will go towards funding more than 200 scholarships. Scholarship recipients will receive $4,500 a year for a four year college, or $2,250 a year for a two year college. The deadline to apply for a scholarship is June 1, 2011.
Raffle winners will be drawn Thursday morning and announced later that afternoon.
To find out if you have a winning ticket in the Arkansas Million Dollar Raffle, follow this link to the Arkansas Scholarship Lottery’s website.
