Desi Store Owner in Illinois Sells $1 Million Winning Lottery Ticket

International lottery schemes – both online and offline – become more accessible to ordinary players.

Lucky Lottery Winning Still Unclaimed

Recent reports on American TV channels tell the story of yet another fortunate lottery player in the State of Illinois. Curiously, the newfound millionaire is yet to claim their prize, State lottery sources confirmed to the media.

This has been the third $1 million winning in less than two weeks. It has also brought luck upon the store owners as they will receive $10,000 as a bonus commission. Dashank and Mixa Desai, a desi family based in the Chicago suburb of Bolingbrook, have been quoted as understandably happy.

Even with the rising popularity and convenience of online lottery sales, some people still choose to run over to their cornerstone retailer. The Desai family has run the store for over 21 years and they had sold winning tickets quite a few times in the past.

This, however, is the largest jackpot amount they’ve seen, Dashank confirms. He recalls the customer, a regular, reciting the six winning numbers of the “Lotto Million” over the phone in total disbelief. And then walking out to talk to someone, certainly to return soon.

Global Lottery Access for Indian Players

The growth in popularity of the world’s top lottery draws has been a widely anticipated reality, industry experts explain. The trend has seen an upturn since the mass digitization of the past few years and especially after Covid-related measures forced many businesses to move online.

Nowadays, American lottery games can safely and conveniently be played from India through lottery sites and mobile apps. The above-cited research shows what players looking for information and buying lottery tickets online amount to over 30% of all organic search traffic on specialized lottery sites.

Quite like the preference for old-fashioned lotto games, online lotteries tend to outperform other real-money games in online traffic volumes. Consumers search for online and mobile lottery ticket sales, mostly with generic terms and rarely with global names and brands.

The top 10-15 lottery-related search queries that Google receives from India (in English) amount to over 6.2 million lookups. Extending to the first 30 keywords, Indians generate over 8 million monthly searches for online lottery. Such figures exclude local language searches and proxy-based traffic that obscures the location of consumers. Analysts expect the actual numbers to two to three times as high.

The trend is stable and rising, putting online lottery operators on the path to global relevance. Certainly, casual and free mobile games record higher search volumes, downloads and game sessions. Those are available for kids, as well as in countries where lottery is not legal.

Yet, the sheer volume and growing interest for real-money games – with lottery a prime example – has made the segment a fertile terrain for advertisers, tech startups and other supporting digital businesses. Online distribution is the future, as is the case with many other daily consumption patterns. It has given Indians more chances than ever before of playing the top lottery games offering the highest jackpot prize pools in the World.