Lottery Starts with a Bang and Big Winners

The Arkansas lottery Commission released numbers today on state sales since the launch last Monday.

As of the close of business yesterday, it's estimated that more than 12.5 million dollars in tickets has been sold.

In the first week of the lottery, Arkansans won 8.2 million in prizes.

And more than 2.1 million will go back in the Arkansas scholarship lottery account.

One man won $25,000 today.     

He's blind, so a friend delivered the good news... And when he heard what he won, he was elated.

"I don't know, it was overwhelming. I couldn't even talk, I couldn't hardly call nobody, I was just shaking!" says winner Danny Howell.

And there are more lottery games in our future.

Here's a timeline of what's coming up for the Arkansas Scholarship Lottery.

On October 20th - we'll get four new scratch-off games

On October 31st, Powerball launches.

On December 14^th, we'll start Cash 3, an Arkansas draw game.

And director Ernie Passailaigue wants to add a lot more in 2010, one game he's considering is a raffle where four, one million dollar prizes would be raffled off.

He's also thinking about another multi-state draw game like "Hot Lotto."