LITTLE ROCK – Someone who bought a ticket in Arkansas is the lucky winner of the largest jackpot ticket ever sold in the state. The player bought the winning Mega Millions ticket in Stuttgart Thursday morning at the All Stop Valero at 408 East 22nd Street. Once the ticket is authenticated by the Arkansas Scholarship Lottery, it will be worth a whopping $177 million, a cash value of about $107 million before taxes. The retailer also gets a $50,000 selling bonus.
“This is a monumental day for the Arkansas Scholarship Lottery,” said Lottery Director Bishop Woosley. “The player wins, but Arkansas wins, too. This will pay millions in state taxes, a big retailer commission, and this kind of attention helps promote our lottery’s mission, which is to provide scholarships for Arkansas students.”
This win puts the number of Arkansas Scholarship Lottery-made millionaires now at 55. The last million dollar prize won in the state was Dannie Mitchell of North Little Rock, who claimed $1 million from a $20 Arkansas Millions instant ticket. The second largest Arkansas Scholarship Lottery winner, from Conway, won $25 million playing Powerball in January of 2010.
The Arkansas Scholarship Lottery produces approximately 45 winners every minute, based on data from fiscal year 2016. The lottery produces nearly 2 million winners every month, or 64,000 per day, or more than 2,500 per hour. The luckiest county in the state, with more than 4 million prize winners in 2016, is naturally the most populous: Pulaski County. But even the “least luckiest,” Montgomery County, saw more than 22,000 prize winners last year.
Since its inception in 2009, the Arkansas Scholarship Lottery has provided nearly $700 million for in-state college scholarships to Arkansas students, nearly $2 billion in prizes to players, and more than $182 million in commissions to Lottery retailers. More than 92 cents of every dollar of Lottery revenue goes to prizes, scholarships, retailer commissions and other expenses in Arkansas.
To date, the Arkansas Scholarship Lottery has provided funding for more than 235,000 scholarships to Arkansas students. To apply for the Arkansas Academic Challenge Scholarship, visit scholarships.ADHE.edu before the June 1 deadline.