Unclaimed lottery winnings on the increase

Unclaimed lottery winnings

Getting first hand information about your favorite lottery game can come in handy. It is good to have this basic information as it enables the player to participate according to the set rules and regulations. Any additional info that is added over the course of time usually updates on the official webpage of your favorite lottery.

Getting to know how to play the lottery online is essential as it is rewarding. The essence of playing the lottery is matching up the numbers and hopefully live happy forever after with your lottery fortune safely banked.

In Louisiana, for the fiscal year that ended in June 30, an approximate of $11 million in lottery winnings went unclaimed. According to Louisiana lottery officials, the year prior to that had seen $8.5 million as the accumulated lottery winnings.

What could be the reason why such large amounts of money go unclaimed by the supposed winners? One proposed theory by the associated press archive is that lottery players do not check their ticket numbers carefully enough to realize that they have won prize money.

A further reasoning as to why this happens is that some players throw away their Mega Millions or Powerball tickets after doing a fast check on the ticket and noticing they have not matched the first few numbers. This is according to Bo Bernhard, who is the executive director of the International Gaming Institute at the University of Nevada.

From the look of it, players do not realize or do not give a care that matching even matching at least two of the winning numbers can earn you a few bucks. It won’t hurt for you to go back and recheck your old lottery tickets just to eliminate the chances of your lottery winnings remaining unclaimed.

The deliberation on the reason behind unclaimed prizes does not stop there. A further theory by Bo Bernhard is that Americans living in this cyber age are becoming ineffective in holding on to physical things such as small lottery tickets.

Players therefore tend to misplace tickets or forget where they had last placed their tickets. Such a trend is thanks to the advent of having almost everything that was on paper record before turned into digital form. We no longer have much paper address books or even hard copies of notebooks but rather more of the digital forms.

Read about the Taxes on lottery winnings now.