In January the group Arcade Arkansas spent $78,408.58 on its petition drive to bring casino-style gambling machines to Arkansas, according to reports filed this week with the state Ethics Commission.
Over $70,000 of the group’s funds went to Spur Line Strategies for “Signature/Political Consulting,” the report indicated.
Arcade Arkansas is putting serious money into its effort to amend the state constitution to bring casino-style gambling machines to Arkansas.
The group has spent nearly $359,000 on the effort since last summer.
If they are successful, the amendment will legalize some 15,000 gambling machines statewide under the Arkansas Lottery and could create miniature casinos all over the state — with little or no oversight to prevent fraud or corruption.
Among other topics, legislators heard about ways the Arkansas Lottery could grow revenue in the future.
One of the charts shown to lawmakers appeared to highlight Keno as a lottery game for Arkansas to consider.
We’ve been down this road before.
Lottery officials lobbied for Keno in 2013 and 2014 as part of an unsuccessful push to bring “monitor games” — casino-style gambling machines — to Arkansas.
In a typical Keno drawing, players choose upwards of 10 or 20 different numbers between 1 and 80. If their winning numbers are drawn, they win a prize.
But Keno is different from other lottery games. While drawings for Powerball or MegaMillions happen once a day, drawings for Keno usually take place every few minutes.
Its fast pace makes Keno a popular casino-style game, because players can pick numbers and place bets over and over again in a short amount of time.
As a result, Keno often is played in a live room full of gamblers.
One of the reasons lawmakers rejected efforts that would have brought Keno to Arkansas in 2014 was that they did not want the state creating miniature casinos in bars, convenience stores, and gas stations as part of the Lottery.
That’s something that could happen if Arkansas authorizes Keno or similar games under the state-run lottery.
However, something that doesn’t get talked about very much is the fact that the Arkansas Lottery also routinely discontinues scratch-off tickets — some of which may still have a million dollars or more in outstanding prize money.
For example, the Arkansas Lottery quit selling its Big Multiplier scratch-off tickets on February 5 of this year. Players have until May 5 to redeem winning tickets purchased on or before February 5.
The Arkansas Lottery decided to quit selling Big Multiplier tickets despite the fact that there are more than $1.8 million worth of prizes remaining from this line of scratch-off tickets — including one jackpot ticket worth $250,000.
These winning tickets either were never sold or — if they were sold — have not been claimed yet.
In other words, by discontinuing the Big Multiplier game before all the winning scratch-off tickets were sold or redeemed, the Arkansas Lottery could avoid paying out as much as $1.8 million in prizes.
The Arkansas Lottery likewise decided to discontinue its Cash Time scratch-off ticket in February despite the fact that nearly 30% of its winning tickets were not sold or have not been redeemed yet.
All told, Family Council has identified more than a dozen lines of instant tickets that the Arkansas Lottery is in the process of discontinuing, with approximately $8.6 million in prize money unpaid from these lottery games.
However, many people may be surprised to learn that a state-run lottery can avoid paying prizes to players by simply cancelling lottery games before all the winning tickets are sold.
