North Carolina Lottery: N.C. Lottery Millionaire Raffle sells out
If you haven't gotten a North Carolina Lottery raffle ticket, you're out of luck.
Less than a week before the Fourth of July drawing, the state sold out of its entire stock of Sizzlin' Millionaire Raffle tickets.
Instead of selling paper tickets from a roll, retailers sold 500,000 numbers through the lottery's computer network.
With four grand prizes of $1 million, a $20 ticket will carry a 1 in 125,000 chance of winning the top prize. For comparison, the odds of buying a winning multi-state Powerball ticket are 1 in 146,107,962.
Unlike Powerball, the Sizzlin' Millionaire Raffle game guarantees that at least four ticket holders will win a million dollars.
The winning ticket numbers will be posted on the evening of July 4th at the North Carolina lottery results page at Lottery Post (http://www.lotterypost.com/results/nc).
Although the actual drawings will be held at 1pm at the Raleigh Lottery headquarters, the external auditor must verify the winning numbers before they can be posted, says the lottery.
The lottery sold its 500,000th ticket (and last one) for the Sizzlin' Millionaire Raffle game at 7:15pm on June 30th, making it one of the most successful North Carolina Lottery games so far.
When the drawing is held on July 4th, there will be four $1 million prizes, five prizes of $100,000, and 500 prizes of $1,000.
Lottery officials say they sold out of tickets about four days earlier than they had planned.