Washington has been blackballed by Powerball.
The 30-state consortium that runs Powerball, the nation’s largest lottery game, notified Washington State Lottery officials late last month that Powerball tickets cannot be sold in any of the states that are part of the rival Mega Millions lottery game.
Washington is one of those Mega Millions states.
Chris Liu, director of Washington’s lottery, said he and other Mega Millions coalition state directors were notified of the Powerball vote during a May 27 conference call with a Powerball official. The vote was 12-18 against licensing any of the Mega Millions states to sell tickets to the Powerball game, Liu said.
Although the Powerball vote apparently took place in late May, it did not come to light until Friday, when the Washington Lottery folks issued a news release to say the state budget office should not count on any additional money from the sale of Powerball tickets in Washington. The Washington Legislature in April passed a bill to allow the state to sell tickets for both the Powerball and Mega Millions games.
That was supposed to produce an estimated $11.5 million for state coffers over the next two years, although that estimate has been questioned by some as too high.
Liu said he was surprised and disappointed to learn that there apparently will be no reconsideration of the rejection vote any time soon – especially since Powerball officials in February first broached the idea of letting Mega Millions states sell Powerball tickets and vice versa.
“They actually approached us with this idea, and we thought it was a good idea to cross-license each other’s game,” he said.
He said he doesn’t know why the Powerball states apparently had a change of heart.
The News Tribune was unable to reach officials from the Multi State Lottery Association, the Iowa-based group that runs the Powerball games. Two messages to marketing director Doug Orr and one message to the chief financial officer were not returned Monday.
The Washington Lottery had assumed Powerball tickets would be available for sale in Washington this fall. But that won’t happen.
“We were not talking about merging into one national lottery,” Liu said. “Each of the organizations was going to remain separate, but we were going to cross-license the games.”
There may be further discussion next week when lottery officials get together for one of their twice-a-year meetings. The National Association of State and Provincial Lotteries is meeting next week in Nashville, Tenn.
Liu said Washington isn’t interested in joining the Powerball consortium, only in licensing the Powerball game. The Powerball consortium has other games that don’t interest Washington, he said.
During the legislative session that ended April 26, lottery officials testified they didn’t want to lose out on lottery ticket sales, particularly on the border with Idaho and Oregon. Both are Powerball states.
Washington officials said they were afraid they would lose Mega Millions and Powerball ticket sales to those neighboring states if the Washington Legislature did not give the Washington lottery authority to sell Powerball tickets, too.
New York and Massachusetts, fellow Mega Millions states, had also taken steps to permit the sale of Powerball tickets. The New York Legislature gave its approval; action by Massachusetts lawmakers is pending.
According to its Web site, Powerball had a $232 million jackpot winner on May 27.
That was only the ninth largest Powerball jackpot.
Joseph Turner: 253-597-8436
joe.turner@thenewstribune.com
blogs.thenewstribune.com/politics
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