Less than 24 hours after the winning Powerball lottery numbers were announced for the largest Powerball jackpot ever, California's five-member lottery commission voted unanimously on Thursday to bring the Powerball jackpot to the state.
"We have to continually offer our loyal players a variety of entertaining lottery games, and we firmly believe that Powerball is a right fit for the California Lottery," state lottery director Robert T. O'Neill said in a prepared statement. "I expect Powerball to add anywhere between 50 to 100 million additional dollars to supplement public education funding, which is our one and only mission. Plus, our customers were pretty clear that they wanted us to bring Powerball to California."
Lottery spokesman Elias Dominguez told ABCNews.com that the California Lottery Commission had been considering the move long before this month's record $587 million jackpot.
"We've been discussing joining Powerball for over a year now," said Dominguez. "But when Powerball went from $1 to $2, it put plans to join on hold."
"We had to step back and see how it would affect sales for Powerball for other states," he said.
Dominguez said the commission also had to consider how it would affect the state's Mega Millions and Super Lotto Plus games.
California's first Powerball sales will begin on April 8, 2013, with the first draw scheduled for April 10, 2013.
California will be the 43rd state to adopt Powerball.
FL Mega Millions HELLO!!!
Perfect now NY and CA can dominate all the PB jackpot wins!
Welcome aboard CA!
Give the people what they want Win Win situation everyone's Happy...
Thank you California
thats it I am quiting the powerball
jealousy is sarcasm
No wait......Why
Actually, sarcasm is jealousy....
Thanks! I was wondering what took so long.
Now we can join in the insanity next time there is a huge JP. I wonder how long before someone in California wins? I say within the first three months.
Jealousy involves a rival in a romantic triangle.
Envy would be wishing you could be a New Yorker or Californian to win the Powerball.
I am neither jealous nor envious, just cool with everything!
Thank you BuyLow for correcting me
It was constructive criticism...no intent to correct....my delivery sucked please forgive me!
i hope you win janem the first week they Draw
Hope this doesn't expand the matrix.
59 numbers is tough enough, beyond that just send the $2 in to PB and skip the formality of playing.
Actually for the convenience of all other states, you could just mail in $208 in one lump sum for the whole year.
Although it would be nice of them to provide free postage, since your not going to win anyways.
Bye. Don't let the door hit you on the way out.
Months? Try weeks.
Well thank you helpmewin, that is the nicest post I have ever read! I would be thrilled with the 40 million starting JP.
I'm guessing with California joining that the JPs will grow even faster.
Factoring in their population and % of lottery players, I would conservatively estimate the JP's to grow 18% faster per drawing.
People, try to win a powerball jackpot before California joins. You all know what will happen when they join.
Is that mail for me?
YW
California is the most populated state in The Union... 37 million people live there, Texas is number 2 and NY is the third most populated state. Jackpots will probably get bigger at a faster rate.
I dont care if Cali wins all the jackpots, I play PB for it's second prize due to the 5 million to 1 odds, and I always add the Power Play.
LOL!!! I don't blame you California!! Seeing all those people spend their money
elsewhere on the big jackpot, they saw how much they made when MegaMillions
was at the record jackpot, they're not going to miss out on that again!!
They voted real quick!! lol
Guys with CA joining PB, this will be first time ever single state with a lottery has 1 large game,
aka pure national game, even thro musty everyone has both.
Florida holding out on getting MM, and that be last state we need to cave in now with CA getting to starting point of pb game, both games have proven them self's this year with ticket sales , both should of been joined already by them.
hell am more shocked, atfer that 656 mega millions jackpot, Florida didn't do what CA is doing right now
waking the hell up and going <snip> we really need to join right about now....
CA lottery people knew ahead of time, it be profitable, they just dragged there feet for a freaking year. this run was a wakeup call, ya we been dragging our feet, i guest we better join now................... cant miss anymore super large sells runs.
god forbid the morons cost them selfs millions in sales again. they wish they had profits form this monster we just had
i am happy for us all thro, now with ever single lottery state behind pb, it can't get any better, we have max power per say , so now we just need more states to get lotteries LOL
No big deal. I'm glad California didn't have PowerBall for this drawing. The odds are 176,000,000 to 1 against you. You're not gonna win anyway.
cali money and no state income tax on lottery winnings should mean a billion dollar plus jackpot in 2013.
The head of the Texas lottery announced in October that California would be joining PB in January. He said the matrix would not change.
Congratulations Cali........
They're not worthy.
Oh Ridge, that's not very nice of you. We Californians have feelings you know. (It's true, I swear!)
Still glad to see you're back.
Statistically things should not change. More people won't make it harder for you to win, the numbers are the numbers that are drawn. There may be more people to share the jackpot with you if you were lucky enough to get the right numbers, but nothing past that would change.
However, with a state that large with a population that large, the initial jackpot should be increased and the subsequent increases on each rollover increased at a larger rate also.
There is going to come a point where the MegaMillions is going to need to seriously compete with the Powerball. The price of the ticket is half of the PB, yet the initial jackpot is less than a third. It needs to be bumped up to at least $20 million.
I wonder if Todd has access to this, but it would be interesting to see what the sales of the MM vs the PB are state by state and how the sales were affected by increasing the price of the tickets from $1 to $2. I personally adjusted my strategy of buying multiple tickets when there was a big jackpot to instead of buying them all on my own like I did when it was $1 to going 50/50 with my brother usually.
Coke needs Pepsi and Pepsi needs coke. Lets just get this thing all ramped up and make Powerball and Mega millions national.
Thank you janem, but I have this haunting fear that Charlie Sheen might win it.
And that would destroy me.
I don't think I could go on.
I understand because that is a fear that haunts us all.
It would destroy every lotto player from east to west.
Still, we would have to find a way to go on.
And go on to play another day......
Congratations to California!
I feel as though they may combine the PB and Megamillion games into "The Super Power Mega National Game" once CA joins...it will have...
starting jackpots of $100 MILLION!!
I do wish Oklahoma had a there own state lotto game the odds would be better.
Ohio had a 100 numbers matrix for their Lot'O Play game(0-99) for a while when they switched from the Super Lotto game(6/49+1) but changed again to Classic Lotto(6/49) when people lost interest in playing. If PB was going to change anything it would probably be the numbers of bonus numbers.
Bigger Jackpots for sure
lol I'd rather have Charlie win it vs Rosie O'donnell and the slew of Obama worshippers. At least with Charlie, you never know what side of the fence he will be on from day to day.
I just don't think I could bear it with him on tv and everywhere else doing that "Winning!" thing again.