About the Louisiana Lottery

Louisiana has a rich lottery history. The state was actually home to the Louisiana State Lottery Company, which sold lotto tickets nationwide and became the largest lottery in the US. The lottery had been set up by a group of entrepreneurs in 1868 and was the country's only legal lottery, but soon developed a bad reputation. The lottery was accused of corruption and eventually ended on 1893 when the lottery moved to Honduras and attempted to continue selling lottery tickets to US citizens.

Louisiana's modern lottery is considerably less controversial and is fairly new when compared with other modern state lotteries. While the first US lottery was established in Puerto Rico in 1934 and the second in New Hampshire in 1964, LA lottery tickets s didn't go on sale until September 6, 1991. These tickets were for Louisiana Treasures, an instant scratch-off game that's no longer offered by the LA Lottery Corporation.

Just a few months later on January 22, 1992, Louisiana lottery's first draw-style game was launched in the form of the LA Lotto. The Louisiana lottery began with a starting jackpot of $2 million, quite a prize for 1992! Unfortunately, over the years this jackpot has decreased and now starts at $250,000. But this hasn't stopped a number of huge jackpot wins. Among the top Louisiana Lotto jackpot wins were a $21.2 million jackpot, which went to the Robert H. LeBas Family Partnership of Church Point. Also Kimberly D. Hall, and Roland and Marion LeBeouf Family Partnership of Houma shared a $31 million jackpot while Timothy Smith from Marrero won $15.6 million.

For LA lottery players looking for really big jackpots, look no further than Louisiana Powerball. LA Powerball drawings have taken place every Wednesday and Saturday, since the game began was introduced to the Bayou State in 1995. In this time, there have been a number of huge jackpots, but Carl Hunter's in January, 2008 was one of the biggest. The man from Metairie won a huge Powerball jackpot of $97 million.

By the LA lottery's 20th anniversary in 2011, the corporation had contributed more than $2.3 billion to the state fund, much of which went to repairing the damage caused by Hurricane Katrina in 2005. The lottery has also teamed up with the New Orleans Saints NFL team in September 1999 to create the Saints instant scratcher. This lotto game included a $100,000 jackpot and loads of ticket and merchandise prizes.