{"id":2930,"date":"2018-01-18T04:51:43","date_gmt":"2018-01-18T04:51:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/52.10.1.109\/?p=2930"},"modified":"2018-01-20T01:24:49","modified_gmt":"2018-01-20T01:24:49","slug":"scratching-the-surface","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thecoloradostatesman.com\/?p=2930","title":{"rendered":"Scratching the surface"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"
The majority of the Colorado Lottery\u2019s self-generated income goes to its winners.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

Colorado Lottery is win-win-win for outdoors,\u00a0<\/i>business and lucky players<\/i><\/h4>\n

BY PETER JONES<\/strong>
\nNEWS EDITOR<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Colin Waters of the Colorado<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>Lottery,\u00a0<\/span>makes a winning presentation last week at Meridian Englewood for the Greater Englewood Chamber of Commerce: \u201cWe see a lot of attorneys come on behalf of their clients. \u2026 You may want to call [your trust] We\u2019re Rich Now and Good Luck Finding Us.\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Not everything you may picture about the Colorado Lottery is reality.<\/span><\/p>\n

If the word\u00a0<\/span>Powerball conjures images of numbered globes bouncing about a glass box\u2014think again. Meet the 21st<\/sup> century\u2019s random number generator.<\/span>\u201cIf you go down to our office in Pueblo, there is literally an office with a computer in it that is not connected to the internet whatsoever,\u201d explained Colin Waters, the lottery\u2019s community-relations specialist.<\/p>\n

Like election watchdogs, the lottery\u2019s drawing manager and an audit team enter the number-generating room at the same time\u2014just moments before someone\u2019s life is potentially changed forever by the random luck of the computer’s<\/span>draw.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe see a lot of attorneys come on behalf of their clients,\u201d Waters said of big winners, who often create trusts to hide their identities from fortune seekers. \u201c\u2026 Let\u2019s say you\u2019re the Penn Trust. \u2026 Now depending on where you live and what your name is, people may be able to figure that out. So, you may want to call it We\u2019re Rich Now and Good Luck Finding Us [Trust].\u201d<\/p>\n

No one attending the Oct. 10 breakfast for the Greater Englewood Chamber of Commerce had any such problems to worry about after guest speaker Waters handed out several dozen free \u201cA Latte Money\u201d cards to the group.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIf it\u2019s a scratch ticket in Colorado, it\u2019s going to be a pun,\u201d he warned before business leaders scratched away on their coffee-scented cards.<\/span><\/p>\n

Though valued up to $5,000, the room\u2019s winners were not so lucky on this day, though a few, including this reporter, picked up a buck or two.<\/span><\/p>\n

Much has changed\u2014not necessarily your odds of winning big\u2014since voters approved the multi-game Colorado Lottery in 1980, though one person has taken home $10,000 three times, Waters said. <\/span><\/p>\n

Although the self-funded sweepstakes still exclusively support the state\u2019s outdoors, the games themselves have gotten more high-tech with a Colorado Lottery app being the latest innovation in this convenience-store roulette.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s becoming more and more sophisticated as the days go by,\u201d Waters said. \u201c\u2026 It tells you what top prizes are running and on what games. It also allows you to scratch your non-winning tickets, and that goes into a secondary drawing.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Last year, Coloradans and others spent more than $558 million on the state\u2019s lottery games, nettin<\/span>g\u2014after winnings and expenses\u2014more than $130 million in proceeds for the Rocky Mountain state\u2019s parks, open spaces and recreation amenities, including many in Arapahoe County. In August, the River Run Trailhead Park \u201csurfing spot\u201d won the Lottery\u2019s Starburst Award for \u201cexcellent use of lottery funds.\u201d<\/p>\n

A little-known fact is that when a big winner gets a check, so does the retailer who issued the winning ticket. On average, lottery-participating stores earn about $14,500 each year in commissions, plus bonuses for selling to top winners.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThat store called Lucky Me convenience in Grand Junction received a $50,000 check\u2014and that\u2019s an independent retailer,\u201d Waters said.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Although the Colorado Lottery offers an assortment of jackpot games, the simple scratch-card impulse games have always been the most popular, Waters said. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cFor whatever reason that is, that\u2019s how people have always thought of the lottery\u2014and that\u2019s how it always will be,\u201d he said.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  Colorado Lottery is win-win-win for outdoors,\u00a0business and lucky players BY PETER JONES NEWS EDITOR Colin Waters of the Colorado\u00a0Lottery,\u00a0makes a winning presentation last week at Meridian Englewood for the Greater Englewood Chamber of Commerce: \u201cWe see a lot of attorneys come on behalf of their clients. \u2026 You may want to call [your trust] …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":2931,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,15,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2930","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business-news","category-economic-development","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecoloradostatesman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2930","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecoloradostatesman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecoloradostatesman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecoloradostatesman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecoloradostatesman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2930"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thecoloradostatesman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2930\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecoloradostatesman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2931"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecoloradostatesman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2930"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecoloradostatesman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2930"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecoloradostatesman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2930"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}