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The Ohio Lotteries Office of State Lottery announced today that it has received more than 1,500,000 tickets for the $1.5 billion state lottery.
The lottery office said that a total of 1,513,926 total entries have been submitted by lottery users.
This represents more than 50 percent of the total number of tickets submitted in the first day of the lottery.
The office said the number of winners is expected to reach over 1 million for the lottery’s opening day.
It was not immediately clear if the total value of the tickets sold was higher than the amount of money awarded in the lottery jackpot.
At a press conference today, lottery director Mike McKean told reporters that the first 1,515,000 winners will be eligible for a total cash prize of $2.2 billion, which includes a $600,000 cash bonus.
That will be distributed in four installments over the next three years.
This means that the $600 million will be divided among about 10 percent of lottery ticket purchasers.
That’s a big difference from the $350 million that was given to the first winners.
McKean added that this will be the first time in Ohio that the lottery will be using a new payment method.
The state is using a lottery-like system that uses a fixed amount of cash to distribute tickets to lottery users and a fixed number of prizes.
McKeans office said this will help increase the number and value of tickets available for sale in the future.