The Florida Lottery broke another U.S. record for single week retail sales of instant games. Floridians purchased $126,250,558 in Scratch-offs the week ending March 3rd, 2019, which generated more than $23.3 million for the Educational Enhancement Trust Fund that benefits Florida students. The record week of instant game sales crushed the Florida Lottery’s previous U.S. record of $123,841,386 set in 2018. This record week comes just six months after the lottery announced seven consecutive years of record-breaking fiscal 2018 sales.
The new weekly sales record week was driven by the Florida Lottery’s newly launched $30 game $15 Million Gold Rush Special Edition, which alone garnered sales of $29.5 million in the week ending March 3rd. The hit $30 game is an addition to the lottery’s popular Gold Rush “family” of games offered at the $1, $2, $5, $10 and $20 price points. As a whole, the Gold Rush family sold $62.88 million in the week ending March 3rd. Additionally, the lottery’s newest $5 game $1,000,000 Luck set a one-week sales record for $5 games with $8.91 million in sales.
All of these games were provided by Scientific Games. The firm is the Florida Lottery’s longtime Scratch-offs provider, currently supplying 99% of the lottery’s instant games.
“We don’t set out to break national lottery industry records; we set out to generate funding to enhance education in Florida,” said Jim Poppell, Florida Lottery Secretary. “These records are just a testament to the careful research, planning and marketing that goes into our scratch-off games so they provide a fun, entertainment value to Floridians. It’s great to see our players having fun, and we look forward to continuing to provide them the best games available.”
Instant games are an important part of the Florida Lottery’s portfolio of games, comprising about 69.4% of its total sales in fiscal 2018. The Florida Lottery participates in Scientific Games Enhanced Partnership’ program which provides instant game design, programming, manufacturing, inside sales, marketing, warehousing, distribution and retail services.
“Scientific Games congratulates the Florida Lottery on another record sales week for Scratch-offs. We are honored to be the lottery’s instant games partner and assist in their mission to generate maximum funding for education in the state,” said John Schulz, Senior Vice President, Instant Products for Scientific Games. “This success comes from many years of working very closely together to create and market games that drive results.”