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Wisconsin Lottery

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Wisconsin Lottery

The Wisconsin Lottery is run by the Wisconsin Department of Revenue and was authorized in 1988 by the state legislature. It is a member of the Multi-State Lottery Association (MUSL). Its games consist of Mega Millions, Powerball, Megabucks, Supercash!, Badger 5, Pick 3, Pick 4, All or Nothing, and scratch games. Since its founding, it has generated $4.6 billion for property tax relief for state residents.

The minimum age to buy Wisconsin Lottery tickets is 18.

Until 2003, a game show produced by the Wisconsin Lottery and Hearst-Argyle Television, called Wisconsin Lottery Money Game, was aired weekly on the Lottery's network of stations. Contestants won a chance to play the game (and $100) if a scratch ticket contained three "TV" symbols; if not chosen for the main game, would win at least $500 from a pool of money split between them and the other 54 players not chosen. Five contestants would play the game, consisting of four or five rounds where they would choose cash prizes hidden behind the letters Wisconsin Lottery Moneygame, which were set up in the style of the Wheel of Fortune gameboard, but with reversed play. Here, contestants hit a plunger to light up one of the word rows, then picked one letter in that word. The letter was turned over to reveal the prize, which in the last round was a maximum of $7,500; there were no letters with penalties where money was taken away. The winner of the main game went to the bonus round, where they spun a wheel which had alternating values of $25,000 and $50,000. During the show, new instant games were showcased, along with lottery news, and a second-chance drawing of losing mailed-in tickets (instant and online) was conducted.

The program was taped at WISN-TV in Milwaukee. All contestants (each could bring a guest 18 or older) living outside of the Milwaukee area received a two-night stay at the Grand Milwaukee Hotel (later the Four Points Sheraton-Mitchell Field, which closed at the end of 2012.) for their appearance. Hosts were Mark Johnson and Parker Drew; the show's hostesses were Mary Christine and Lori Minetti. The show's format was changed to a new version known as the Super Money Game in mid-2002, involving more contests with a smaller contestant pool, equivalent to a lower-cost version of the Hoosier Lottery's Hoosier Millionaire.

The Lottery television network consisted of the following stations from 1988 until 2002:

WISN Radio (1130) in Milwaukee aired the drawings on radio until the station's 1997 sale from Hearst to Clear Channel Communications. Several Wisconsin stations picked up the audio portion of the television drawings, though most stations read the winning numbers from Associated Press releases from the Lottery on the mornings after the drawings, which also are published online, in newspapers throughout Wisconsin, USA Today, and the border areas of outlying states. Lottery results are also a common feature of the last segments in the state's late newscasts, and a feature of station news tickers.

The Lottery joined the multi-jurisdictional Lotto*America game in 1989. Later, the Lottery began its Wisconsin's Very Own Megabucks jackpot drawings after the launch of Powerball (which replaced L*A) in 1992.

The Lottery's nightly drawings, starting in 1991 with the introduction of Supercash! (a $250,000 daily six-number game when it began), took place at WISN-TV. Employees who were not part of the station's news department, or employees of WISN Radio and WLTQ, which were owned by Hearst at the time and shared the WISN studios, drew the numbers. In 1993, the Lottery added a Pick 3 game, followed by Pick 4 in 1997. Other games were added by the Lottery, but were not always successful, such as MUSL's Daily Millions, which was infamous for having few winners of the $1 million cash prize, and having a complicated drawing procedure involving three number pools and various colored balls. Another MUSL game, Cash4Life (not to be confused with the current multi-state game by that name), which offered an annuitized prize of $1,000 per week for life (no cash option was available) with a first-prize win from a 99-ball pool; only four players won that game by its end in 1999. Neither WISN nor the Wisconsin Lottery network televised either game's drawings (held at 9:45pm) due to lack of popularity and their drawing time being during primetime. The Badger 5 game continues to this day; its play style is found in most U.S. lotteries.

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