Minnesota Lottery Holding $1 Million Raffle Drawing Sunday

UNDATED - Hundreds of thousands of people are anxiously waiting for New Year's Day to see if they are a big lottery winner. The Minnesota State Lottery is holding its big raffle drawing again this year.

Spokeswoman Marie Hinton says the tickets are all sold out, and they've sold out all 11 years that they've been doing the raffle drawing. She says the winning tickets will be announced early Sunday morning.

We should be releasing the winning numbers by 5:00 a.m. on New Year's Day. So, people can check our website to see if they're starting the new year with a new $1 million prize, or any other prize.  There's two $1 million prizes, bu there's actually over 4,000 winning tickets.

Hinton says they sold 700,000 tickets at $10 each for the New Year's day raffle drawing.

About a month ago you might remember we told you there was a $1 million Powerball ticket sold in St. Cloud. Hinton says we still don't know who is holding that winning ticket, but we may know soon.

We don't officially know, but we did just hear from someone who says that they have the ticket and they're planning on claiming it within the next couple of weeks. But, of course until we actually see the ticket, we don't know for sure.

The winning $1 million Powerball ticket was bought for the November 26th drawing at Coborn's on 8th Street North in St. Cloud.

Meanwhile, another local unclaimed prize is a winning $28,000 Northstar Cash ticket that was bought for the June 6th drawing at the Qwik Stop in Sartell.

Ever wonder what happens to big Powerball winners years after they win the big jackpot? Coming up in January the Minnesota State Lottery will be releasing a video on a Minnesota winner from 2008.

People are always asking how our jackpot winners are doing and what they're up to.  Two of our winners who claimed a $108.1 million jackpot in 2008 agreed to do a follow-up with us and talk about what it's been like to be a Powerball jackpot winner.

Hinton says you should be able to see that video on the Minnesota State Lottery's website by the end of January.

Profits from lottery ticket sales topped $144 million last year, with the money going into the state's general fund as well as the environmental fund.