North Carolina launches new college scratch-offs, a $5 Tar Heels ticket and a $5 NC State ticket

The North Carolina Education Lottery put two college-branded scratch-offs on sale Tuesday, September 29, one for the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and one for NC State. It is the first time the lottery has launched university-branded games, it said.

“We are excited about the potential of these games knowing that North Carolinians are extremely passionate about the UNC and NC State rivalry,” said Randy Spielman, the lottery's chief product officer.

The two games, TAR HEELS and NC STATE, are built on the same prize table. Each costs $5, has two $200,000 top prizes, six of $10,000, and 16 of $2,000, and each has overall odds of 1 in 4.16. The lottery puts the odds of a top prize at 1 in 1.44 million. Both come in three ticket designs, and each has a second-chance promotion with VIP experiences tied to the school's teams.

Tar Heels pays back 69.0% of sales as prizes and NC State 68.9%, both right at the 69.1% average for North Carolina's 23 active $5 games. NC State printed 2,953,980 tickets against 2,911,440 for Tar Heels, so the Wolfpack game carries a bit more prize money, $10.18 million to $10.04 million. Together that is the more than $20 million in prizes the lottery advertised.

The most common prize on either ticket is $10, a little over a third of all winners, and roughly 28% of winning tickets just return the $5. On our ValueScore™ they now rank first and second among North Carolina's $5 games, Tar Heels at 65.7 and NC State at 64.9, largely because nothing big has been claimed yet. With only two top prizes each, that lead can disappear with a single claim.

How the rest of the state's lineup pays by price is in North Carolina payout by price, and new games are tracked on the new North Carolina scratch-offs page.

Sources

NC Education Lottery: New UNC and NC State scratch-off games launch today