New Mexico Lottery: '4 This Way' is a Big Hit with New Mexico Lottery Players
The New Mexico Lottery Authority has announced that its newest lotto game, "4 This Way!" has averaged more than three top prize winners a week since its launch in September.
To date, 42 players from across the state have won the game's top $4,000 prize by matching all four winning numbers in the order they were drawn, a release from the Lottery says.
Each play costs $1 and there are four prize levels, ranging from $4,000 to $1.
It's difficult to compare the success of the Lottery's various games in terms of numbers of winners, says Lance Ross, the Lottery's media spokesperson. "Each game is different. Players have their favorites. Because the odds and the prizes and play styles are all unique, it's difficult to compare the number of winners between games."
In terms of the player base for each game, sales of "4 This Way!" are comparable to Pick 3 sales when it started several years ago, Ross says. In July 2003, sales of Pick 3 amounted to $29,000 a week; they rose to $38,000 to $40,000 a week since Thanksgiving of this year. By comparison, sales of "4 This Way" have reached $20,000 to $27,000 per week since Thanksgiving 2004.
"Hopefully, sales of '4 This Way' will match Pick 3's dventually. But there's probably some overlap [in players]," Ross says. He adds that when the Lottery adds new games to its repertoire, sales of existing games stabilize, but do not suffer.
Based on sales through November and a corresponding fund transfer in late December, the New Mexico Lottery will have raised almost $230 million for New Mexico education since the Lottery was launched in April 1996. Of that, more than $163 million will have been earmarked for the Lottery Success Scholarship program, which has provided in-state tuition at colleges and universities for more than 32,000 college students. Another $66.5 million had previously been used for school construction and repairs.