Droves of foreigners are flooding across the border to buy tickets for Wednesday’s $1.5 billion dollar Powerball drawing.
According to the Seattle Times, Point Roberts — which is connected to the British Columbia’s Tsawwassen Peninsula in Canada but is part of Washington state — has a population of 1,300, yet the Point Roberts International Market Place has racked up an astounding $186,000 in ticket sales over the past two months.
“It’s a crazy scene,” said manager Dean Priestman. “It’s easy to tell they’re Canadians because a lot of them are not familiar with the game, so they’re asking a lot of questions, and that slows up the process a little bit. All they know is they’re buying a chance for over a billion dollars.”
The influx of Canadiens has even forced Priestman to devote staff members purely to selling tickets.
“I have one person just standing there selling the tickets, and then they hand them to another person at a designated cash register who rings them up. We also have a machine that sells them, and I have one person who stands there and helps customers.”
The Northern border isn’t the only one being affected by the drawing.
Tuscon News Now reports that Villa’s Market in Nogales — “just a few hundred feet from the Mexico – U.S. border, and the first place to buy Powerball tickets if you cross the border by foot” — have made thousand dollar ticket sales to men who simply walked in from Mexico.
“We had about $3,000 [of tickets] first sale this morning. It took about 2 hours to print all his tickets and we had another guy this morning who bought about $2,000 [worth of tickets] and I think our sales this weekend on Sunday we sold $5,000 just lottery,” noted manager Sergio Villa.
Similarly, Nondas Pries, the owner of another Hialeah (FL) convenience store, recalls selling tickets to “Brazilian tourists.”
If a winning ticket is not drawn Wednesday, ABC is reporting that the jackpot will rise to $2,000,000,000.