PowerBall Problem for Virginia

North Carolina has started offering PowerBall, and this is good news to lottery players in Virginia. It isn’t, however, good news for Virginia lottery dealers. They are losing money as their clients go over the state line to play something they don’t offer. 

Many of them will play some of the games that Virginia offers, but more often than not they go across the state line and play the slot machine type lottery machines and hope for a windfall. Now, North Carolina is adding Pick 3 and Cash 5, which will hurt business for them as well. The more they offer, the less their own clients will purchase from them – and this means less money for them as well as for the state of Virginia. 

The Virginia Lottery is reporting that sales are down 21% in the last 22 weeks that North Carolina has been offering Powerball. That equals about $3.6 million dollars that the state is going to be short this year, and this is just the beginning. If sales have dropped that low in just the past 22 weeks, they are concerned what the rest of the year will hold for them.

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