Patent ID: 7381132

Claim:
A gaming system comprising: a plurality of independent sub-systems, each of said sub-systems including a different type of ticket-based lottery game; a first jackpot game; a plurality of game tickets each having indicia for use in the play of at least one of the different types of ticket-based lottery games and each also having a respective machine readable ticket code unique to that ticket in said sub-system, the machine readable ticket code for use in the play of the first jackpot game; a plurality of distributed terminals for dispensing the game tickets, at least one central computer in communication with said terminals, each of said terminals having at least one code reader for reading said machine readable ticket code from each of said game tickets when the ticket is dispensed, data storage means for storing a prize code, comparison means for comparing said prize code with said machine readable ticket code read from each of said game tickets, and for indicating a match between said machine readable ticket code and said prize code; and a supervisory computer means connected for communication with the at least one central computer of each of said independent sub-systems, said supervisory computer means being programmed to receive ticket sales data from each of said sub-systems, determine the amount of a jackpot prize based on said ticket sales data, and communicate information to each of said sub-systems as to the amount of said jackpot prize and the occurrence of a match between a prize code and a ticket code.