New Lottery Game to Feature $100,000 ‘Instant’ Prize

SACRAMENTO —  California Lottery Director Mark Michalko announced cumulative estimated lottery sales of $1.25 billion and unveiled a fifth game Monday with 365 top “instant” scratch-off prizes of $100,000.

The new “Grand Game,” to begin Friday, will offer $179 million in total prizes and give players one chance in 10 overall of winning prizes of $2, $5, $100, $500 and $100,000 on $1 scratch-off tickets, Michalko said.

Winners of $2 and $5 can redeem prizes immediately from vendors and others must submit official lottery claim forms.

Players who scratch off three “entry” symbols will qualify for the weekly televised Big Spin game offering $10,000, $50,000, $100,000, $1 million or the progressive grand prize that starts at $3 million.

The grand prize currently stands at more than $6 million, said lottery security chief Lew Ritter, who added that the wheel used for the spin is “working almost perfectly” according to the law of probability. “It is random, it is fair,” he said.

“For the first time in our history, we are offering a top prize in six figures in the instant scratch-off game,” he said. The fourth game, “California Gold Rush,” ends at midnight Thursday.

Michalko said the lottery, which began Oct. 3. has continued to average $8 million in daily sales and that relatively few of the more than 20,000 retailers offering the tickets have quit selling them. An additional 10,000 retailers have expressed interest in becoming vendors, he said.

Michalko estimated total sales for the first four games at $1.25 billion, with proceeds to California schools at $425 million.

At the Capitol news conference, Michalko also signed a contract for on-line computerized games with GTECH Corp. for an estimated $121 million over the next four years.

He said it is undetermined how large the jackpots might be for those games, expected to begin this summer. The contract with GTECH Corp. included $81 million in a fixed payment and about $40 million from a percentage of $2 billion in estimated sales over the next four years.