Category: Arkansas Lottery

Lottery Proponents Don’t Understand Meaning of “Success”

How do you define a “successful” state lottery?

Is it the lottery that sells the most tickets? The lottery that has the highest gross revenue? What about the lottery that awards the most scholarships? Or the lottery that does the least amount of harm to the local economy?

I would argue there really is no such thing as a “successful” state lottery, because lotteries pull money out of the local community and drag the economy down. That said, however, I really don’t think lottery proponents have a clear understanding of what a “successful” state lottery is, even under their own terms.

When the Arkansas Lottery was pitched to voters, proponents promised it would be a “world class” lottery “for education.” It would “generate” money for college scholarships and help more Arkansans go to college.

They even named it the Arkansas Scholarship Lottery. So in theory, the way you measure the Arkansas Lottery’s success is by the amount of scholarship money it pays out, right?

But that’s not the way lottery officials seem to measure its success at all. They are focused almost exclusively on gross ticket sales. This was underscored by a lottery consultant from Philadelphia who told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, yesterday, “Our objective … is to think about how we can get as many people to play the lottery as possible and spending really small amounts of money. We believe there is an opportunity for strong long-term sustainable, responsible growth.” (more…)

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Will the Lottery Be Selling Tickets to University Students Saturday?

Will the Arkansas Lottery be selling lottery tickets to university students this Saturday? That’s a question raised by a press release from Lottery officials.

Earlier this year the Arkansas Lottery secured funding to do promotional activities on college campuses in Arkansas. We asked, at that time, if the Lottery meant to sell lottery tickets to students. Yesterday, Lottery officials elaborated on their plans, saying that this weekend “[s]tudents, parents, faculty, alumni and football fans attending select home games can stop by the Arkansas Scholarship Lottery pre-game celebration area for games, giveaways and information about the scholarship program.”

Now, one has to ask just what types of “games” and “giveaways” they mean. Will they include lottery tickets?

This is important, because research consistently indicates teens and young adults are among those most prone to develop gambling problems.

Lottery officials may think that if they get college students to start buying lottery tickets now, those students will be lottery “customers” for years to come. However, micro-targeting teens and young adults is irresponsible. It has the potential to create more gambling addiction and could lead to ruined lives, down the road.

We’ll probably know more about the Lottery’s intentions after Saturday. In the meantime, we will continue to monitor this situation.

Photo Credit: “Gameday2” by Rmcclen at en.wikipedia – Transferred from en.wikipedia by Ronhjones. Licensed under Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.

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Arkansas Lottery Scholarship Funding to Hit All-Time Low in 2015

Since the Arkansas Lottery’s inception, we have written over and over again about the paltry percent of gross revenue the Arkansas Lottery Commission awards for college scholarships.

When the Arkansas Lottery began five years ago this month, we calculated that only about 22% of lottery revenue went to students. The rest went somewhere else. That meant if you bought a $1 lottery ticket, only 22 cents of that dollar went to scholarships. At the time, that was the third-lowest percentage in the nation.

Despite efforts by lawmakers to require the Arkansas Lottery to set aside a minimum percentage of its revenue for students, lottery officials continued reducing that percentage of gross revenue. We have seen the percentage allocated for scholarships drop all the way from 22 cents on the dollar to 19.8 cents on the dollar (last year).

Now the Arkansas Lottery Commission has reduced it again, with only 18.76% of gross revenue going to scholarships.

Under its budget for 2015, the Arkansas Lottery hopes to take in about $416,770,000 in gross revenue, and it hopes to pay out $78,185,000 in scholarships. That means for the first time ever, lottery scholarships will receive less than 19% of the Arkansas Lottery’s total revenue.

Just to put those numbers in perspective, Louisiana requires its lottery to allocate at least 35% of lottery revenue for education. That’s how the Louisiana lottery paid out tens of millions of dollar more in education funding than Arkansas’ did despite taking in nearly $100 million less.

It isn’t just Louisiana, either. Many state lotteries set aside at least 25% – 30% for education funding.

People keep talking about trying to bolster lottery ticket sales to improve scholarship funding, but when your lottery isn’t required to set aside a minimum percentage of its revenue for scholarships, there’s no guarantee soaring ticket sales will do any good for Arkansas’ students. After all, the way the law is currently written, the Lottery Commission could approve a budget that pays $0 for scholarships. It’s all up to them.

The Arkansas “Scholarship” Lottery continues cutting its scholarship budget and refusing to set aside even an average percentage of its revenue for education. That’s simply unacceptable.

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