All eligible players must be 18 years old or older to participate
in the Minnesota Lottery. The Minnesota Lottery currently offers four types of
games: Scratch, Lotto, Print-n-Play, and Raffle. For scratch games, follow the
directions on your scratch-off and claim your earnings at a certified lottery
retailer. Lottery games require you to select numbers, with your chances of
winning hinging on whether your selections match the results of the drawing.
Players can choose a random selection of numbers generated by the machine if
they don't want to choose specific figures themselves.
Print-N-Play games are available for $1, $3, or $5, with the pot
for each game starting at $5,000. The pot grows until someone wins, with $1
tickets paying 20% of the earnings, $3 tickets paying 60%, and $5 tickets
paying 100% of the prize. Players can choose from games such as Crossword,
Slots, or Bingo as part of their Print-N-Play selections. To play the Minnesota
Millionaire Raffle, simply buy a ticket and see if your numbers match any of
the over 12,000 winning numbers on New Year's Day.
All lottery tickets in the state of Minnesota must be purchased
from a certified lottery retailer. These include convenience stores, liquor
stores, smoke shops, and grocery stores. Lottery tickets are also sold at the
Mall of America and Duluth Airport, among other nonstandard locations. Players
cannot purchase tickets online as of August 31, 2015, when the Minnesota State
Legislature voted to terminate the sale of eScratch tickets through the
Lottery's website.
Yes, but only if the retailer that you're purchasing your ticket from
accepts it. Minnesota law says that retailers may accept coin, currency, money
orders, and checks as payment for lottery tickets. Using a debit card is
functionally the same as paying with a check, so if the retailer accepts these
payments, then you're free to use them to purchase your lottery tickets. It's
important to note that it's completely up to the retailer which forms of
payment they want to accept, so just because one store allows debit card
purchases doesn't mean others will too.
On average, the Minnesota Lottery pays out over 92,000 prizes per
day. Since the Minnesota Lottery started in 1990, players have won over $7
billion.
Closing times can vary for different games in the Minnesota
Lottery. While some games cut off right before the drawing, others have a wider
gap of time in between. Here are the exact Central Standard times that
Minnesota Lottery games cut off:
Here are the Central Standard Time drawing times for each game in
the Minnesota Lottery:
Winners can claim prize money of $599.99 and under at certified
lottery retailers across the state of Minnesota. All prizes exceeding $600 can
be claimed at a regional Minnesota Lottery location or the Minnesota Lottery
Headquarters at:
2645 Long Lake Road
Roseville, MN 55113
Monday to Friday
8:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.
It's recommended that you make an appointment before trying to
claim your earnings at a Minnesota Lottery regional office, as those with
appointments receive priority. It's not required to make an appointment at a
Lottery facility in order to claim your earnings, although it is recommended to
avoid possible delays in receiving your prize.
For prizes of $50,000 and below, you can also claim your earnings
by mail. For prizes above this amount, you can call the Minnesota Lottery at
1-888-568-8379 or 651-635-8273 to learn the options for claiming your winnings.
For Lotto games, players must claim their prizes within one year of the drawing
date. For Scratch games, you can claim your earnings for up to one year from
the game's end date.
Your odds of winning a prize depend mainly on which game you
play. The highest odds of winning are with the Daily 3 Odds, where you can play
a three-way box bet and have your odds of winning at 1-in-333. With the
Minnesota-only Gopher 5 game, you have a 1-in-7,034 chance of winning with 4
out of 5 balls. Your chances of winning the top prize with 5 out of 5 balls are
1-in-1,533,939.
Overall, the chances of winning one of Minnesota's in-state games,
like Gopher 5 or Northstar Cash, are higher than winning a game that's part of
the Multi-State Lottery Association. It's important to note that your chances
of winning a smaller prize are always higher than your chances of earning a
larger sum. For example, the $2 Star Ball game has odds of 1 in 17, but the
prize is only $2. The highest odds of winning $1 million are in the Minnesota
Millionaire Raffle, with two winners each year and odds of 1-in-350,000.
Conversely, your odds of winning the Powerball jackpot are
1-in-292,201,338, but this prize can value at hundreds of millions of dollars.
Similarly, the odds of winning the Mega Millions jackpot are also low, with
chances averaging at 1-in-302,575,350. Both the Powerball and Mega Millions
games are part of the Multi-State Lottery Association, which contributes to
their large prize sums and lower overall chances of winning.
The Gopher 5 jackpot winning ticket from August 31, 2020, was sold
at Wash-N-Fill Express in New Brighton, Minnesota. The prize was a historic
$1.8 million, an impressive number considering the jackpot starts with only
$100,000. The winning ticket matched all five numbers in the drawing, awarding
the winner $1,881,874. It was the third-largest Gopher 5 prize ever awarded
by the Minnesota Lottery, and the Wash-N-Fill Express where the ticket was sold
earned a $5,000 bonus after selling the winning ticket.
Yes, but it depends on how much you win. The state of Minnesota
requires that anyone who wins a lottery prize of less than $10,000 have their
name and city included in publicly available data. The information of
individuals who win more than $10,000 is automatically kept private unless the
winner chooses to go public with their earnings.
To learn more about the Minnesota Lottery and how it works,
contact Lottery Current with any questions.
The $800 million dollars Mega Millions jackpot was won by some lucky person in Sugar Land Texas. The winning ticket matched all six numbers in Tu