San Diegans Buy More on 2nd Day : Lottery Fever Still High; Sales Triple Expectations

California’s infatuation with the new state lottery continued unabated Friday, as lines of eager ticket buyers snaked through the aisles of neighborhood shops and supermarkets on the second day of the state gambling game.

Many merchants in San Diego reported stronger sales than on the lottery’s opening day. “I think a lot of people were letting the initial shock wave get over,” said Wes Appleby, owner of Mail Boxes Etc. USA on Clairemont Drive.

In some cases, anxious gamblers were waiting outside for stores to open Friday, though retailers indicated that steady sales had replaced Thursday’s kickoff surge at many outlets. There were heady expectations, too, of continuing heavy sales through the weekend.

“People drink most on the weekend, and they’re going to come buy more tickets from me on the weekend,” said John Silva, manager of Rancho San Diego Wines and Spirits in Spring Valley.

Many retailers ran out of tickets and had to stand in long lines at regional lottery offices to get more.

Officials estimated 21.4 million tickets were sold in the lottery’s first 24 hours, almost three times more than had been projected. There were 179 verified winners of $5,000 by Friday, including 11 in San Diego County. The $5,000 prize is the largest instant payoff in the “scratch-off” ticket game. Winners of $100 in the instant game are eligible for another game with larger prizes of as much as $2 million.

The unexpectedly huge demand caused some distribution headaches.

Lottery Director Mark Michalko said his workers had tried to warn store owners of the danger of underordering, “but we met some resistance.”

“We’re trying to handle these (replacement) orders as best we can now,” Michalko said.

He said most lottery offices, including the San Diego office, would stay open today to handle the flood of reorders.

Lottery employees in San Diego threaded their way through boxes of tickets spread across the floor of their cramped office. A constant crowd of merchants, 50 strong most of the day, waited to pick up reorders.

Between 1.5 million and 2 million tickets were distributed by the local office Friday, according to Molly English, district sales manager for San Diego and Imperial counties.

“People have been back here two or three times,” English said.

Rita Osa, 29, was back Friday at the Camera Liquor Store in Los Angeles’ Boyle Heights area for another $34 worth of tickets for her mother, Lila Armejo. Armejo spent $80 on the game Thursday and won only a few dollars.

“This is household money and wait until my father gets here, he’s going to kill her,” Osa said.

Asked what could be done about the lure of the lottery for the poor, one of the most persistent criticisms of the game, Michalko said he had no answers.

Target Group

“They are not our target group,” Michalko said. “We don’t want people playing with money they don’t have. We want people to play only with discretionary money . . . and we’ve made it very clear to people who our target audience is. Beyond that, we cannot control these activities.”

Around the state, there was a mixture of eager buyers waiting for tickets and agitated retailers trying to keep calm in long reorder lines. In Anaheim, some store owners had to wait as long as four hours to pick up more tickets.

Some merchants said the grandiose $100 and $500 purchases of the lottery’s first day had given way to more commonplace sales. “They’re in the lower amounts today, most of them,” said Jerry Pelosi, manager of Sabatini’s Liquor on Rosecrans Street in San Diego. “They’re averaging around $5--some $10, some $15.”

The 7-Eleven convenience store chain, which has 1,100 outlets around the state, reported the sale of tickets had fallen off slightly Friday but was still “dramatic.” According to spokesman Don Cowan, sales at the company’s 150 San Diego County stores averaged 3,500 to 4,000 tickets on the lottery’s first day.

Meanwhile, lottery advertising on radio and television continued, as the state tried to keep sales booming.

Brad Fornaciari, in charge of advertising for the lottery, said the games will be plugged daily in every media market of the state.

Fornaciari said the current television blitz, which will run through Oct. 21, features “all different groups of Californians playing the lottery and having fun . . . working couples, people riding in pedicabs, San Francisco people, factory workers, all kinds.”

“We’re just trying to let people know that playing the lottery is fun, that it’s played by a wide variety of people,” he said. “There are some misconceptions about who plays the lottery, and we just want to show it’s as broad-based as the state.”

The lottery will spend about $3 million on publicity for its first game, Fornaciari said.