The N.C. Education Lottery will join lotteries across the country this fall to offer a new draw game, MONOPOLY MILLIONAIRES’ CLUB™ lottery game, with the potential to create more millionaires at one time than any other lottery game in history when its Top Prize of up to $25 million is won.

Tickets for the new game go on sale Sunday, Oct. 19. The game combines the rewards of multi-state lottery gaming with the fun and entertainment of a national television game show featuring players selected from among the lottery’s ticket holders who have registered their tickets online.

To launch the new game, the N.C. Education Lottery plans to hold its own exclusive, one-time drawing on Oct. 24, the night of the first MONOPOLY MILLIONAIRES’ CLUB lottery drawing, to guarantee that someone who buys a ticket in North Carolina will win $1 million in the first drawing. The North Carolina $1 million prize will be in addition to any other prizes won during the new game’s first drawing.

The $5 ticket will offer three ways for someone to win $1 million or more. Players can:

• Win the Top Prize, which begins at $15 million and can rise to $25 million.
• Become one of the many, randomly-selected $1 million winners when another player wins the Top Prize.
• Register a ticket online where they will build MONOPOLY Property Sets to earn entries into a drawing for a chance to appear on the nationally televised game show. The show will have more than $2.5 million in available prize money on each episode.

“Only luck will decide if the Top Prize along with other million dollar prizes will be won in the game during the first drawing,” said Alice Garland, executive director of the N.C. Education Lottery. “But in North Carolina, we will add our own exclusive $1 million winner so that we can start making more millionaires the first night.”

Garland said to meet the lottery’s mission to raise money for education in North Carolina the lottery works to keep its games fresh and fun. This year, the lottery’s goal is to raise more than half a billion dollars, $520 million, for education programs.

“We’ve had lots of players suggest that rather than having a huge jackpot, they would prefer to play a game that creates more meaningful wins for more people,” said Garland. “So take that feature, add the popular MONOPOLY brand theme, create a TV show for lottery players, and we have a fun and exciting game to offer to North Carolinians.”

The MONOPOLY MILLIONAIRES’ CLUB lottery game is designed to generate simultaneously multiple $1 million prizes and the number will continue to grow each week until the Top Prize is won. It will be the first multi-state draw game at the $5 price level in the United States, though $5 is the most popular price point for instant scratch ticket games, both nationally and in North Carolina.

Drawings will be held each Friday at 11:15 p.m. Odds of winning the game’s Top Prize will be 1 in 73 million.

In early 2015, the “MONOPOLY MILLIONAIRES’ CLUB” television series will welcome players from participating states to its studio audience in Las Vegas where they will compete before a live audience to win $1 million. Comedian and actor Billy Gardell (“Mike & Molly,” “You, Me and Dupree”) has been tapped to host the show.

This new approach to a national game was created by Scientific Games and branded with Hasbro’s iconic MONOPOLY game, which is one of the most well-known brands in the world.

On each ticket in the MONOPOLY MILLIONAIRES’ CLUB lottery game, there will be a unique code that players can use to register their tickets online for a chance to appear on the television show. For each taping of a show, at least three North Carolina lottery players will win a five-day, four-night trip for two to Las Vegas to join the studio audience of other players. Some studio audience members will be selected at random to compete on the television show, and for each show one segment will feature a North Carolina contestant. Contestants will play a series of games with a MONOPOLY theme, each of which will offer cash and other prizes valued up to $100,000. A final round will offer one player on each episode a chance to win $1 million.

Since 2006, there have been more than 170 MONOPOLY lottery games launched globally with a retail value of nearly $5 billion, most performing 10 percent or more above industry averages, based on data from MDI Entertainment, A Scientific Games Company. According to LaFleur’s Magazine, MONOPOLY Millionaire, distinct from traditional MONOPOLY, was one of the most popular licensed brands in lottery gaming in fiscal year 2013. MDI Entertainment has introduced 14 MONOPOLY Millionaire lottery games with retail value in excess of $850 million.