New Yorkers have the New York Lottery. North Dakotans have Hot Lotto. Floridians have Florida Lotto.
Starting Oct. 19, residents of those states — as well as those in Kentucky, Maine, Texas, 16 other states and the District of Columbia — will share the nation's latest multistate lottery game.
Monopoly Millionaires' Club will feature a weekly drawing, held Fridays at 11:15 p.m. ET, with players hoping to hit the numbers for a top prize of $15 million and 10 smaller prizes of $1 million. There also will be a nationally televised Monopoly Millionaires Club game show that will begin airing in February, with its audience and players coming from people who registered their lottery tickets online.
"Players are always looking for something different," said Carolyn Hapeman, spokeswoman for the New York Gaming Commission. "Any product has to evolve. Our jackpot games have to evolve."
Multistate lotteries began in the 1980s with Lotto America, which became Powerball, said Terry Rich, president and CEO of the Iowa Lottery Authority and president of the North American Association of State and Provincial Lotteries.
Powerball and rival Mega Millions signed a cross-selling agreement in January 2010 that saw 23 state lotteries adding Mega Millions and Powerball picking up 10 Mega Millions members.
Monopoly Millionaires will be "the first where we started out as a big group together," Rich said.
Another nine states are tentatively expected to join Monopoly Millionaires' Club in coming months, including Ohio, California, and Wisconsin, Rich said.
Meanwhile, smaller multistate lotteries are mushrooming across the nation, such as Iowa and Minnesota's All or Nothing game, which started in January, and New Jersey's Cash for Life, which New York is joining on Oct. 20. Lucky for Life, which began in Connecticut and expanded to five other New England states in 2012, expects to be available in at least 14 more states by spring.
"The games perform a little better with a bigger population base," said Minnesota Lottery Director Ed Van Petten, adding that three more states have asked to sign onto All or Nothing. "With more players, you have more grand prize winners, which makes for better advertising for you and makes the game more kind of in their face."
Mega Millions tickets cost $1. Powerball tickets are $2. Monopoly Millionaires' Club will be $5.
Its origins came in the agreement for Powerball and Mega Millions states to start cross selling each other's lottery products. Out of that came plans to create "a national premium product," said Rebecca Paul Hargrove, president of the Tennessee Lottery.
The $5 game follows on the heels of what's been a successful model for the scratch-off ticket side of state lotteries.
"The growth in our industry has come from instant ticket games" — particularly as more states have begun offering pricier, $2, $10 and even $25 options, Hargrove said.
More higher-priced "premium" games could be in the offing.
"We're always looking for different angles," Rich said. "Consumers like to try the hot new thing."
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