BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) – A record $1.6 billion Powerball jackpot in January significantly boosted Louisiana’s lottery ticket sales, giving the state lottery its best sales month ever.
The Louisiana Lottery Corporation announced Wednesday that it took in $166 million in its most recent quarter, including the January Powerball sales.
Of that, the lottery says $58 million goes to the state treasury. That’s nearly $13 million more than the same quarter a year earlier.
Lottery President Rose Hudson described it as “mind-blowing what that jackpot has meant to our sales.”
The sales record will give the budget a bit of a boost. But it won’t help fill some of the state’s $600 million budget shortfall next year. The effect of the Powerball jackpot on lottery sales had already been incorporated into state budget estimates.
Copyright 2016 The Associated Press.
