Michigan Lottery: Latest Michigan Lottery raffle offer $1,000 a week for life

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Tickets on sale Monday; drawing is June 22

Michigan Lottery officials are banking they've come up with a winning formula for the next raffle game: A top prize of $1,000 a week — for the rest of the player's life.

Win for Life raffle tickets go on sale Monday for $20 each, and once 300,000 are sold, that's it.

Lottery Commissioner M. Scott Bowen said the state's 12th raffle "not only offers players a whole new way to win, it gives them a way to stretch out a win."

The prize that keeps on giving should go over well with players, said Sam Kassab, owner of the Chene Trombley Market in Detroit, one of the top Lottery retailers in the state.

"Anything new and our sales go up," he said.

Kassab said that while the top prize doesn't offer the same excitement as a $200 million jackpot offered in some multistate games, "a thousand a week is a thousand a week and believe me it will sell."

In addition to the top prize, there will be 25 winning tickets worth $50,000 apiece, and 10,000 ticket holders will collect $100 each. More than $3 million will be divided among the winners.

If a 20-year-old player won the top prize and lived to be 90, he or she would receive a total of about $3.6 million over their lifetime.

And if a 65-year-old player were to win and die the following year, the person's estate would continue to get the $1,000 weekly prize for 19 years. However if the winner had collected prize money for at least 20 years, the payouts would cease upon the player's death.

Win for Life is the first raffle from the lottery with a lifetime prize, although the approach has been used in a handful of $5 instant games. In those games, sales were at least 10 percent higher than traditional instant games, Lottery spokesperson Andi Brancato said.

Winning raffle numbers will be drawn June 22, or later if tickets don't sell out by then.

Lottery sales are up 1.4 percent over last year. However, revenues that go into the state School Aid Fund are down 5.4 percent compared to last year, because of prize payouts. Last year the lottery pumped $740.7 million into the school fund.