What gas station sells the most winning scratch off tickets near me

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Florida Lottery data reveals most winning retailers

Data from the Florida Lottery shows which Central Florida stores sell the most winning lottery tickets.

ORLANDO, Fla. – Tasha Thompson believes she has the most luck buying lottery tickets at Rightway Food Store on North Orange Blossom Trail.

“This is the best store to come to because I win all the time here,” Thomson said as she purchased several scratch-off tickets. “(About two years ago), I’m not going to say how much, I won a lot (of money) off two $5 tickets. It was a lot. So this is a good store.”

Data obtained from the Florida Lottery confirms Thompson’s theory, that the 6700 N. Orange Blossom Trail store is the most winning retailer in Central Florida when it comes to large payouts.

Over a two-year period from 2017 to 2018, the Orlando store sold 130 winning tickets with large prizes of $600 or more. That total includes both scratch-off tickets and “draw” games such as Powerball, Mega Millions and Fantasy 5.

Winners who collect prizes of $600 or more must fill out a claim form indicating where the ticket was purchased.

Those claim records show the 130 winning tickets sold at Rightway Food Store generated a total of nearly $366,000 in prize money, including $100,000 netted by a single Gold Rush Doubler scratch-off ticket in August 2018.

About 1.5 million lottery tickets were sold by the retailer between 2017 and 2018, records indicate, including tickets that paid out less than $600.

Below, see the list of the top 10 businesses with the most lottery winners. If you’re viewing this on the News 6 app, click here to see the graphic.

Retailers that sell a large number of lottery tickets typically produce a large number of big winners, but there is not an exact correlation between sales and winning tickets, Florida Lottery data shows.

Although Rightway Food Store sold the most winning tickets with large prizes in Central Florida over two years, another retailer actually sold nearly 713,000 more tickets overall during that time period, records show.

That retailer, Stop N Save Store at 1096 Mason Avenue in Daytona Beach, sold 112 winning tickets with prizes of $600 or more, records show.

"Around here we're known as the luckiest store," said employee Alvin Cherian. "We have a loyal base of customers, plus we also have customers who come all the way from Jacksonville and from Titusville."

More than $1 million in prize money was won by customers of Stop N Save Store over two years, records show, including one scratch-off ticket worth $500,000 and another that paid out $250,000.

See the total prizes by store and county below. If you’re viewing this on the News 6 app, click here to see the graphic.

Click on the dots in the map below to see how many winning lottery tickets were sold. Viewing this on the News 6 app? Click here to see the graphic.

Copyright 2019 by WKMG ClickOrlando - All rights reserved.


About the Author:

Mike DeForest

Emmy Award-winning investigative reporter Mike DeForest has been covering Central Florida news for more than two decades.

A Legit Way to Boost Your Odds of Hitting a Scratch-Off Jackpot

Want to Win Big with Lottery Scratchers? Follow This Tip.

 Matthew Horwood / Getty Images

Are you planning on buying some lottery tickets for yourself or as a gift for a loved one? If you pick up lottery scratchers at your local convenience store or gas station, the chances are you'll probably win a small prize, if any — a buck or two, maybe $20 if you're lucky. But of course, the reason you're buying a ticket at all is that chance to win a big jackpot worth five figures or more.

But... did you know that there's a chance that you could buy a scratcher ticket that advertises a big grand prize — and have absolutely no chance of winning that prize? Would you still buy that scratch-off ticket if you knew the odds of winning more than a few bucks weren't just low but zero? Especially if other games had better chances of a jackpot payout?

Probably not.

Before you buy a lottery scratcher, you must do one important thing: research which game is offering a ticket worth buying.

Why You Need to Do Research on Lottery Scratchers

Lottery scratchers are distributed to retailers in large rolls. Each roll is guaranteed to have a certain number of winners. Some of those winning scratch-off prizes will have bigger values, others will have smaller ones.

The lottery scratchers usually advertise grand prizes, like a "$1 Million Merry Millions" jackpot. But unless the game has just been released, there's a chance that someone else already won that jackpot.

If the winning scratch-off ticket has already been redeemed, the lottery knows that the big prize is gone, but they still sell tickets to that game because the smaller prizes are still available.

It's totally legal to sell those tickets, even though the lottery is advertising a prize that's no longer available. That's why it's worth the time to research whether big prizes are still available before you buy.

Not fair? Well, even if the grand prizes are gone, there may still be attractive prizes available to you. But if you don't want to settle for a smaller win, a little bit of research will ensure that you have the best chances of winning a jackpot.

How to Research Your Lottery Scratchers

To make buying lottery tickets more attractive, the state lottery websites publish information about which scratch-off prizes are still available. While there's a small chance that someone has bought a winning ticket but hasn't redeemed it yet, checking the lottery website before you buy gives you the best odds of a big win.

Here's how to find the information you need:

  • Visit the lottery website for the state where you're buying the tickets.
  • Look for the scratchers or scratch-off section.
  • Look for a break-down of all the different games and the prizes they have remaining.
  • Pay attention to when the records were last updated. If you can, try to buy shortly after the lottery releases an update so you're using the most recent information.
  • You can also check how long the scratch-off game has been running. Buying tickets from a new game gives you higher chances that more prizes are available for you to win.

Once you know which prizes are still available, you can decide which game you want to play based on factors like the ticket price, the size of the prizes being offered, and how many prizes are still available.

What If You Can't Check the Website?

If you're buying tickets spontaneously or you don't have access to the internet, you might not be able to check the state lottery's website. So what can you do to boost your odds of choosing a big winner?

First, you'll want to look at the odds of winning versus the payout.

Tip:

A rough rule of thumb is that scratchers that cost more money have better odds of winning and higher prize payouts.

Another thing you can do is to look for games that offer a guaranteed winner per roll of tickets. This means that somewhere in the roll, there is a winning ticket (although it won't tell you whether it's been claimed or not).

Next, you can ask which number the next ticket on the roll has before you buy. Although this may vary by state, rolls are often numbered sequentially starting with 000, so if the ticket number is low, it's less likely that one of the winning tickets from that roll is already gone.

If you find a low-numbered roll with a guaranteed prize, you might want to buy a series of tickets from that roll. Each non-winning ticket you buy from the same roll gets you, theoretically, closer to a winning ticket. Switching games, however, means that the losing tickets won't necessarily bring you any closer to a winning ticket.

Finally, you can ask the store clerk whether they've had a recent win from that roll. The clerk might not know, or might not be willing to answer. But if they do say that they've had a winner recently, your odds could be better if you pick a different game.

By taking a bit of time to strategize before you buy, you can raise your odds of winning a jackpot through a lottery scratch-off.

Where is the most winning lottery tickets sold?

More jackpot-winning tickets have been sold in Pennsylvania than in any other state, Powerball records show. A total of 18 winners have been recorded in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, including the most recent jackpot in early August worth $122.4 million.

Which lottery game gives you the best chance of winning?

Powerball has an 1 in 292,201,338 odds for its jackpot and 1 in 11,688,054 odds for its $1 million prize. Meanwhile, Mega Millions has 1 in 302,575,350 odds for its jackpot and 1 in 12,607,306 odds for its $1 million prize. However, depending on the date, the jackpots can differ considerably.

What scratch off wins the most in TN?

The Jumbo Bucks 300X scratch-off is among the most expensive games offered by the Tennessee Lottery while also offering the most lucrative payout.

What state has the best scratch ticket odds?

After Idaho, eight states give more than 70% of their lottery earnings as prize payouts: North Dakota, Massachusetts, Arkansas, Arizona, South Carolina, Pennsylvania and Maine round out the states with the highest lottery payouts.