Published: November 13, 2019

Texas Lottery tickets coming to a Dollar General store near you in next few weeks

The Texas Lottery is in the business of making as much money as it can. To help sell even more tickets, a new partnership with Dollar General will give Texans 1,500 new options for purchasing either Powerball or Mega Millions tickets by the end of the month.

While the national chain does boast about it's low prices, the lottery says its new partnership is not based on customers' income.

"The Texas Lottery's goal is to provide all Texas lottery players the opportunity to play the games of Texas in the most convenient way possible," spokeswoman Lauren Callahan says.

Dollar General, which has 10 San Antonio stores among its 1,500 statewide, also insists the new venture is valuable to all of its customers.

"I think there's a little bit of fallacy from Dollar General's perspective in terms of looking at lower income customers," says company spokeswoman Crystal Ghassemi.

She notes the new lottery agreement will give Dollar General customers two QuickTicket options; $4 for a two-ticket card or $10 for five tickets. Winners will have to collect their money at a claim center.


"For Dollar General, our average basket size is below $12," Ghassemi says. "So when you look at an item that is $4 and $10, certainly that takes up a considerable amount of the basket."

Customers we talked to today appreciate the idea of buying tickets at Dollar General.

"People trying to save a little bit of money so they can buy a lottery ticket," says Mike Medina, who buys about 20 tickets per month. "I think it would be okay as long as people are getting the stuff that they really need before they’re buying the lottery tickets."
 

Theresa Solis also tells us she will buy lottery tickets at Dollar General. "I can buy some stuff and at the same time, buy a lotto ticket," she says.
 

Customers also stressed the positive impact the lottery has had on education. Both the lottery and Dollar General tout that benefit, too.
 

"We're both grounded very much in that cause," Ghassemi says.
 

About a quarter of the money the Texas Lottery takes in goes to K-12 education. That was $1.6 billion dollars to the Foundation School Fund last year. All told, the lottery generated $6.25 billion in sales in fiscal year 2019.

The lottery is also working on several other deals with well-known retailers.
 

"We hope and expect to deploy at additional retailers in the near future, including major pharmacy and grocery chains," Callahan says.

A new concept with H-E-B is also in the works "to deploy a separate in-lane solution called receipt ticket," Callahan says.

Dollar General will initially sell only tickets for the two multi-jurisdictional games; Mega Millions and Powerball. The Tennessee-based company, which has 16,000 stores nationwide, will be monitoring the rollout in Texas before it considers expanding lottery sales in any of the 43 other states where it currently has stores.

https://news4sanantonio.com/news/local/texas-lottery-tickets-coming-to-a-dollar-general-store-near-you-in-next-few-weeks

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