New SC lottery of little concern to Georgia ticket dealers

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Posted 6:19AM on Monday, January 7, 2002

AUGUSTA - South Carolina begins selling lottery tickets Monday but the new rival to the east isn't an immediate concern for Georgia lottery dealers, who rake in more than $115 million from Palmetto State players. Many of those outlets are in our area in Stepehns, Hart, and Franklin counties. Florida and Georgia lotteries coexist peacefully, say officials who predict the same for Georgia and South Carolina. ``I don't see a war with Georgia,'' said John C.B. Smith, chairman of the South Carolina Education Lottery Commission. ``I just see us providing a product for South Carolinians that (they) want and that they have previously been going to Georgia to get.'' Rebecca Paul, president of the Georgia Lottery Corp. and a former Florida Lottery director, agreed. The Georgia Lottery didn't slow Florida sales much in 1994, its first year, mainly because there are no large cities along the states' line, she noted. Florida lost about 10 percent of sales in Georgia border counties the month after Georgia's games started in 1994, Florida Lottery spokesman Leo DiBenigno. Sales then rebounded. Jerry Smith, who works at State Line Lottery adjacent to Interstate 85 in Lavonia in Franklin County, said he wasn't worried about motorists taking their gambling dollars to South Carolina because of the smaller jackpots there. Georgia participates in the multistate Big Game and Lotto South, which both offer multimillion dollar prizes. Initially, South Carolina's largest award will be $100,000. ``People are not going to stop in South Carolina,'' Smith said. At nearby Dad's II, co-owner Joe Cheek predicts lottery business eventually will find an equlibrium for both states. ``I remember when Florida had a lottery and Georgia didn't,'' he said. ``I think it hurt the guys in Florida for a while when Georgia started theirs, but in about a few months they couldn't tell any difference.'' When former Georgia Gov. Zell Miller began campaigning for a state lottery, he cited the dollars going south as one reason to support its creation. With $1.1 billion in sales its first year, the Georgia Lottery went on to break the first-year start-up record of $658 million Florida set in 1988. The Florida Lottery sold $2.1 billion in 1994, Georgia's first lottery year. South Carolina officials said they have 4,100 applications to sell the new tickets. In the nine counties that border Georgia, 494 retailers have applied, and in the nine counties that border North Carolina, 1,243 have applied. The first games will be scratch-off tickets. Officials hope to begin a numbers drawing March 6, although technical glitches threaten to delay that deadline.