CHARLESTON, W.Va. — The jackpots for the West Virginia Lottery’s two most high-profile games have reached three digits and the public is starting to take notice.
Wednesday’s Powerball drawing will carry a $178 million jackpot. Tuesday’s MegaMillions game will have a jackpot estimated at $321 million.
Lottery Deputy Director for Marketing Nikki Orcutt said the massive jackpots have become the trigger for many to play the lottery.
“Starting jackpots of $20 and $40 million just isn’t enough to get people’s attention any more,” said Orcutt. “We’ve set the bar pretty high with these record jackpot amounts.”
Orcutt said that’s unfortunate because regardless of the jackpot amount the odds of winning remain the same. Lottery officials call it “jackpot fatigue” when the potential prize of 20 or 40 million isn’t enough to entice people to play. Orcutt said typically they don’t see an increase in players until the jackpot hits a three figure amount. From there, the lottery starts to see more and more players as the jackpot increases with no winner to claim the prize.
Powerball remains the lottery’s most popular game. Orcutt said when both jackpots are at a high-level people won’t necessarily spend more to play both.
“What we typically find is, if you were going to spent $5 to play Powerball, you would see players typically starting to split their play,” Orcutt said. “We don’t’ necessarily see a huge increase in sales for either one of the games. We see people splitting their discretionary dollars to play either one of the games depending on which one entices them.”