The Lotto Is On-Line; State Hopes It’s Winner

With celebrities, balloons and marching bands, the California Lottery launched ticket sales Tuesday for Lotto, its legalized version of the old numbers game, which officials hope will boost flagging interest in the $2-billion-a-year state lottery.

Lotto 6/49 went on-line at 12:30 p.m. when Lottery Director Mark Michalko threw a ceremonial switch on an outdoor stage in Westwood. Within six hours, ticket sales had nearly reached the $1-million mark, and despite scattered reports of computer failures at the state’s 5,000 retail outlets, officials pronounced the kickoff a success.

In four cities around the state, the lottery staged elaborate, simultaneous ceremonies intended to boost first-day ticket sales. Baseball players, an Olympic gold medalist, actors and marching bands were part of the festivities in Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco and Sacramento.

Michalko was joined by Los Angeles Dodgers second baseman Steve Sax, television personality Byron Allen and the UCLA Marching Band on a closed-off Broxton Avenue in Westwood.

Carnival Barker

Sounding a bit like a carnival barker, Michalko told the crowd: “6/49 describes the game. Pick six numbers from the field of 1 to 49. If you match all six, you win the jackpot. We have the biggest, quickest lotto game in the world.”

Just how big and how fast remains to be seen.

On Saturday, in a program televised statewide from Beverly Hills, a machine will spit out the winning numbers in the form of six of 49 consecutively numbered balls. Drawings will be held every Saturday at 7:58 p.m. After the first week, the drawings will be in Sacramento.

The size of the jackpot will depend on how many people bet each week, although it is expected to at times mount into the tens of millions of dollars. The odds of winning it on any given week are 1 in 14 million. If no one picks the six winning numbers, the prize money will be rolled over into the next week’s pool.

Smaller prizes will be awarded to players who select three, four or five of the winning numbers or five of the winning six, plus a bonus number that will be selected every week. Odds of the smaller prizes are lower.

First-day sales of the $1 tickets fell short of the turnout of a year ago when the lottery made its debut in the form of scratch-off tickets. The lottery sold 21.4 million scratch-off tickets in the first 24 hours at 20,000 retail outlets.

But ticket sales for the scratch-off game have declined steadily since. Michalko said the lottery drew $9 million in sales per day when it began but “stabilized four to five weeks ago at about $2.5 million a day.”

Orange County’s Lotto kickoff was relatively low key. The only real ceremony was at Stadium Liquors in Anaheim, where purple lottery balloons burst in the heat and a young Long Beach woman dressed as a human-size Lotto ball distributed entry blanks that promised customers a chance to win a car.

An estimated 500 people gathered at the tiny liquor store to watch lottery representative Sid Kaplan grab a microphone and tell the sweating, would-be Lotto players of “the good news” about gambling.

‘Go in and Play a Bunch’

At 12:30 p.m., Kaplan pulled the switch--a glittery contraption that looked like an outsized mousetrap--and said: “Let the game begin. . . . Go in and play a bunch, guys.”

Kevin Pittman, 29, really needed some of Kaplan’s promised “good news.” A chemist unemployed for the past month, Pittman said he was driving by looking for work when he saw the crowd and stopped.

“I’m not going to buy any tickets,” the Anaheim resident said. “I can’t afford it. I’m just going to take the free one.”

Unlike Pittman, John Krajacic, 70, came to the liquor store about 10 a.m. planning to spend big. He was first in line and bought $500 in chances at fame and fortune. He said he already had spent between $4,000 and $5,000 on lottery tickets in the past year.

“I’m buying a lot of tickets for one big reason,” the retired Anaheim motel owner said as he clutched a bulging manila envelope of betting slips. “I come from a poor family, and I got no schooling. This (the lottery) is a good benefit for the kids, to get more schooling.”

Tony Lo Piccolo, owner of Stadium Liquors, said he did about $4,000 in Lotto business in the first three hours of play, “and they’re still coming.”

At Larry’s Pharmacy in San Clemente, Larry Beierle rang up his own Lotto purchase to kick off the game. “Five dollars, that’s all I have--Saturday, I’ll be a millionaire,” Beierle said.

Then he rang up $15 worth of numbers for Joan Goodwin, 72, of San Clemente, who had her numbers picked out two months ago.

“First I put down the numbers I used to pick at bingo,” Goodwin said. “Then the ages of my grandchildren, my daughters, my birth date, and the rest are just my favorite numbers.”

At least three Orange County retailers had to turn away customers because of malfunctioning Lotto machines Tuesday. At one Thrifty drugstore on Harbor Boulevard in Garden Grove, the machine sat unused, its empty cash drawer yawning open and its “PLAY HERE” display hidden behind a counter.

Pauline Allen of Garden Grove had a message for lottery officials in Sacramento as she left the store: “Tell them I’m put out because I came here wanting to buy a ticket on the first day and it wasn’t hooked up. I just had my 70th birthday, and I came to buy a ticket for my present.”

Lottery officials in Orange County could not be reached for comment on the area’s Lotto performance. Sacramento-based officials said it would be impossible to compute the numbers of breakdowns and sales at the county’s 543 Lotto outlets on the first day of play.

Several San Diego County convenience and liquor stores also described problems with Lotto machines that slowed sales. At the San Diego Lotto kickoff event at a Mission Valley shopping mall, which featured Padres players Steve Garvey and Tony Gwynn, a jammed terminal doubled the wait for customers lined up to buy their first chance.

Contributing to this story were Times staff writers Ken Chavez, Gabe Fuentes and Leonel Sanchez in Los Angeles; Maria L. LaGanga, Gordon Grant and Bob Schwartz in Orange County; Nancy Reed in San Diego, Tilly Fong in Sacramento and Dan Morain in San Francisco.