State Lottery Opens With Lots of Pizazz

California plunged into the gambling business today with what is expected to be the nation’s biggest state lottery, offering 400 million $1 “instant winner” tickets at retail stores from the Mexican border to Oregon.

The lottery, beginning six months behind schedule, is expected to become the largest of 22 state lotteries in the United States with estimated sales of $1.4 billion in its first full year.

Across the state at 12:30 p.m., thousands of retailers sporting the bright orange “L” lottery logo started selling $1 “California Jackpot” scratch-off tickets, which offer “instant” prizes of $2, $5, $100, $500, $1,000 and $5,000.

Balloons, Speeches

Parade-filled, balloon-spewing, speech-making events began midday in downtown Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco and Sacramento.

In Los Angeles, where temperatures had climbed unseasonably into the 90s, the parade got under way about 11:45 a.m. Three buses loaded with college bands rolled through the streets, sporting banners that urged passers-by to attend the kickoff ceremony at the nearby Dorothy Chandler Pavilion.

At the pavilion, lottery workers released 100,000 orange and green lottery balloons. Four small booths were selling the first lottery tickets, and one man, Vito Pace of the Los Angeles suburb of Montebello, said he couldn’t wait to be a customer.

“You go to (Las) Vegas, put $100 down on the craps table and you can lose it,” Pace said. “Here, $100 can go for a month.”

Meanwhile, planes scrawled messages overhead urging people to buy tickets.

Lottery Theme Song

Every ceremony included a performance of the lottery’s theme song, “It’s a Good Feeling,” which plays on the games’ contribution to education.

Gov. George Deukmejian, who opposed the lottery initiative because he believes the government should not be in the business of gambling promotion, skipped the ceremonies.

Thousands of tickets will be given away free by the lottery and businesses to promote the games.

Lottery spokesman Bob Taylor at the Sacramento headquarters said a “minor hitch” in the kickoff developed because officials had been unable to distribute tickets to a small percentage of the 21,000 outlets statewide by today.

But he said that about 120 million of the 400 million game-one tickets already had been distributed throughout California, adding, “Virtually every retailer, by the end of the day, will have tickets.”