Is San Francisco Or San Diego The Luckiest Lottery Location In America?
Over the years, it has been difficult to determine if San Diego or San Francisco are the luckiest lottery locations, and no new data has been collected by an independent, third-party researcher.
What is know is that San Francisco seems to still be overpowered by San Diego as the luckiest for winning the lottery. However, this list was published in 2016 by the California Lottery, and it states that San Diego is now leading San Francisco for historical lucky retailers.
This is not surprising since San Diego also beat out San Francisco in research conducted by Men’s Health in 2011.
According to their data, San Diego was the luckiest location in America for a variety of reasons including contests, sweepstakes, and lottery winnings.
On that same list, San Francisco was No. 6 on the list under the same criteria. Interestingly, the other cities in the top 10 were not in California.
Although San Diego won the title as the luckiest location in 2011, there is a strong history of San Francisco lottery wins over the past 20 years — and the past few years in particular. This seems especially true when San Francisco is expanded by something comparable to San Diego County by including the Bay Area.
In fact, until data can be collected by an independent third-party, it might be safe to assume that the San Francisco/Bay Area is almost as lucky as San Diego County.
For example, In 2014, CBS San Francisco was proud to announce that they had as many as five locations that were lucky lottery locations — but in the Bay Area.
Adding to this, one of the most notable lottery wins in America happened in San Francisco in 2000 when an elderly couple won $88 million in the California State Lottery. At the time, it was one of the largest payouts ever. That ticket was sold at Smoke Signals at 2223 Polk Street.
In 2009, Mill Valley’s deputy sheriff stopped at the Strawberry Chevron station at 580 Redwood Highway. The sheriff ended up buying a Mega Millions ticket that won him a third of a $225 million ticket.
Scratch-offs also have luck in the Bay Area. In 2011, a Fantasy 5 lottery ticket was sold at the Lone Tree Chevron in Antioch that was worth $203,363, according to ABC.
Some of the stories about lucky San Francisco lottery wins are also a bit strange. For example, in 2011 a winning lottery ticket valued at $200,000 was sold at Quarts and Pints in San Francisco was unclaimed.
One other strange San Francisco lottery tidbit is the “luckiest locations” map you can use at the California Lottery website.
According to their website, the way the 2016 lucky retailers are chosen is by only listing stores that have sold at least one winning ticket in 2015 that was worth $100,000 or more.
These listed lottery stores also had to have sold at least $4,000 in winning tickets each week as well as paying out an average of 400 winning tickets every week.
Of course, one of the strangest things about winning the lottery is what happens to many people afterwards. As previously reported by the Inquisitr, some people donate a significant amount of money to charity or give the whole ticket to a good cause.
Alternatively, there have been some instances where people win the lottery and it is not lucky at all.
For example, Time reported in early 2016 that “about 70 percent of people who suddenly receive a windfall of cash will lose it within a few years,” and the source they quoted was the National Endowment for Financial Education.
Atlantic added to this in 2016 when the Powerball lottery rose to $1.5 billion nationwide and stated that part of the reason lottery winners are not lucky is due to their low-income background.
For this reason, lottery winners in the U.K. are required to meet with financial planners if they win a significant amount of money because the winners “may have less personal-finance knowledge, particularly when it comes to dealing with large sums of money.”
[Feature Image by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images]
