Tonawanda lottery players win most; Cheektowaga has the most outlets
Clerks often know what to reach for when lottery players walk into the Mobil station on Niagara Falls Boulevard.
"They're regulars: a $5 scratch-off and a coffee every morning," said Kenneth Taylor, manager of the Town of Tonawanda business, near the Youngmann Highway.
"You know what they play," Taylor said. "All you have to ask is how many tickets."
Winning is also part of the routine at this Mobil, as it is at many other outlets in the Town of Tonawanda, which ranked as Erie County's winningest big town last year.
Lottery retailers in Tonawanda, as a group, sold tickets that returned 65 percent to players.
Retailers in Hamburg and Orchard Park, in contrast, returned 54 percent to players. The average return for outlets in Amherst, Cheektowaga and West Seneca was 57 percent, the same as Erie County's overall average return. The statewide average was 60 percent.
At the Mobil station, lottery players bought 11,379 winning tickets for prizes totaling more than $118,000 — or $10, on average — for each winning ticket.
For every $100 wagered at the Mobil, $68 went back to players.
Winning tickets bring back players for more games, Taylor said. But even if his customers stopped winning as much, many would still return.
"It's part of their routine," he said. "People are willing to spend $5 for a chance to get $2,000."
A News analysis, based on hundreds of thousands of records detailing sales and winnings over six years, shows:
•: Cheektowaga has more lottery outlets, 119, than any other suburb, and the outlets' combined sales of nearly $45 million last year exceeded the combined sales of outlets in Amherst, Hamburg and Orchard Park.
• Among ZIP codes, 14043 — which includes Depew — had higher annual lottery sales per adult than any place in Western New York, excluding downtown Buffalo. Two Wegmans and two Tops Markets, each ranked among the top 10 outlets in lottery sales in Western New York, are located in the ZIP code. ZIP code 14219, which includes Blasdell and the northern part of the Town of Hamburg, recorded the second-highest sales per adult.
• Players buying tickets at Wegmans, Tops and Wilson Farms account for slightly more than $1 of every $4 spent on the lottery in Western New York.
Drive along Niagara Falls Boulevard, the border between Amherst and Tonawanda, and there are as many winning locations on one side as the other.
But venture off the boulevard into the respective towns, and lottery players had more luck in Tonawanda than in Amherst, even though they're playing the same instant games for the most part. Choice of lottery games doesn't explain the disparity in the Northtowns. Bad luck does.
Granted, fewer businesses in this part of Amherst sell lottery tickets, but none of the outlets in Snyder had a winning rate of 60 percent or more.
Eggertsville had none outside of Niagara Falls Boulevard. Williamsville had one.
At a Sunoco convenience store on Maple Road in Amherst, about a mile and a half from the Mobil, players have also had little luck playing the lottery. Players at Herrscher's Express Mart won back just 45 percent of the $110,000 they spent on lottery tickets last year.
That didn't deter Mike Folino, a plumber from suburban Rochester, who spent $1 on a Mega Millions ticket. He doesn't fit the profile of players in lottery-happy Cheektowaga, Tonawanda or Buffalo, however.
"I'll never make a trip just to get a lottery ticket," said Folino, who stopped in to buy milk and a banana. He doesn't spend more than a few bucks a week, so hasn't lost or made much playing the lottery.
But he's like all the other players in at least one way.
He thinks about how nice it would be to win.
"I like the instant gratification," he said.
Also today: SPECIAL REPORT: LOSING BY THE NUMBERS IS NOT JUST BAD LUCK FOR THE POOR."
