RALEIGH -- William Hinton walked into the C Mini Mart on Poole Road and bought $45worth of lottery tickets one day last week.
Hinton, 59, is on disability and doesn't work. He says he only occasionally buys tickets, maybe $5 or $10 worth a week. But his inch-thick stack of paper ticket slips suggested otherwise.
C Mini Mart, the state's second-highest grossing store, sold $1.4 million of lottery tickets last year. Spend a few hours in the store and it's clear that the sales are driven by a regular and frequent customer base. Few who cash winning tickets leave without letting at least some of the winnings ride on a few more tickets. The scene is similar in other top-selling stores.
Of all the questions that have been asked about the state's nearly three-year old lottery, "Who plays?" is the most difficult to answer. Extensive interviews and observations at the C Mini Mart and interviews at other top-selling stores reveal that a fervent customer base is driving sales at the top retailers. Players have made the lottery a daily or even twice-daily habit. And stores have adapted their operations to serve them.
The lottery expects to sell $1.4 billion in tickets in its current fiscal year.
Where they buy
The lottery doesn't survey its customer base because it is forbidden by law from targeting its games to any specific population. But it's easy enough to identify where tickets are sold. Of the 6,000 stores that sell lottery tickets in North Carolina, the top sellers tend to be along interstates or a major highway, which means players may not be buying close to home.
That fact makes it difficult to draw conclusions from the demographics around a particular store. But, eight of the top 10 selling lottery stores are in ZIP codes with a household median income of less than $50,000. All 10 stores are in areas with a minority population of at least 40 percent.
C Mini Mart and a Rose Mart store in Wilson, the number one lottery retailer in the state, are in ZIP codes with those demographics.
Cash payout is a draw
The Rose Mart, on West Raleigh Road in Wilson, always pays winners in cash instead of a money order, which makes the store a destination for players.
"Most people don't have checking accounts," said Sandy Starr, who runs the store.
The Rose Mart sold $2.6million worth of lottery tickets in 2009, the most in the state by more than $1 million. Stores receive 7percent of every lottery dollar spent, which means the Rose Mart's commission in 2009 was $182,000.
Shortly after lottery tickets went on sale, Starr removed an aisle of merchandise from the store to make room for tables so players would have a place to sit and scratch tickets. Starr was hoping players would buy more tickets with their winnings.
"In a month's time we doubled our sales," she said.
A steady line of customers kept the lottery machines and cash registers buzzing in the afternoon at the Hari Express on Brookshire Boulevard in Charlotte on a recent day. The store, in a ZIP code that is 52percent minority, was ranked among the top 1 percent of highest-grossing stores. Most players came armed with slips of paper with their chosen lottery numbers penciled in. Others paused to scan a display case of scratch-off tickets.
"Give me some kind of winner," Don Walker, 50, told a cashier. "You guys have been giving me blanks."
Walker said he used to spend about $20 a week on lottery tickets and considered giving it up this year because of the tough economy. Instead, he decided to cut back a little. Now he said he spends $8 to $10 a week on games such as the Pick 3 and Powerball. He picks his own numbers.
"I trust myself. I don't trust no machine," he said.
Lottery Executive Director Tom Shaheen said he has seen the intensity of some players. But he thinks those players are the exception. Shaheen meets many of the winners who claim big prizes at the lottery's Raleigh office. Many bought their tickets on a lark. Most are middle class, he said, and winners are diverse in race and age.
The lottery raises money for educational programs and spends more than $10 million a year on advertising and promotion.
Shaheen said the aim is not to reach hard-core players.
"Our goal is to get more people buying lottery tickets, not to get the same people buying more lottery tickets," Shaheen said.
Habits in need of help
Players should be playing because the money benefits education, and because it's fun to dream about winning a big prize despite huge long-shot odds, Shaheen said. The lottery encourages retailers to tell customers if their lottery habits get too big.
Warren Liles, who runs the C Mini Mart in Raleigh, said he has told several customers they should call the state's gambling help line. Many of those customers still buy tickets at his store.
Liles has worked hard at building a strong lottery customer base. Customers are welcome to hang out and play their tickets. Liles posts several weeks' worth of winning numbers for the many players who like to try to divine a pattern in the winning digits. Liles extended his counter so lottery players can have a dedicated register.
Liles will even scratch the ticket for you, if you want.
Bill Easterling's eyes aren't good enough for him to scratch his own tickets. So when Easterling, 72, traded a winning ticket for more scratch offs at the C Mini Mart recently, he never touched the cards.
Liles used a metal can opener that was hanging from the counter to reveal a small code at the bottom of the ticket. That code is all his lottery computer terminal needs to read to determine if the ticket is a winner.
"We claim to be the inventor of the 'scratch-and-scan,'" Liles said of his assisted-scratch method.
Dipping in a little
Bernice Borden scratches her tickets at her Raleigh home. On a recent day at the CMini Mart, Borden, 59, pulled from her purse $46 worth of winning scratch-off tickets. Borden, a retired courthouse clerk, picked out $46 worth of new scratch-off tickets.
Lottery tickets are entertainment, she said, and the winnings allow her to play more. One $100 win lasted three weeks, she said. When the winnings run out, she'll put down just a few dollars for another round of winnings, but said she won't dip too far into her retirement check.
"I don't take from my table," Borden said.
Many of Liles' customers have been coming to his store for decades and wouldn't buy tickets anywhere else.
Just once more
In Charlotte, Valerie Jones said she has won $3,000 over the years on tickets she bought at the Hari Express.
Jones, 50, said she stopped playing the lottery last month. She wasn't winning, she said, and didn't like that taxes are taken out of larger prizes.
Still, as she talked, she conceded she might play a little.
On the way out of the store, she stopped by the cashier's counter. Jones left with a few scratch-off tickets.
Charlotte Observer reporter April Bethea and News & Observer staff researcher David Raynor contributed to this report.
