Yesterday the Arkansas Lottery released its financial report for the month of June.
June marks the end of Fiscal Year 2018 for the Lottery. According to the report, the Lottery took in nearly $37.7 million last month, but paid out less than $13.4 million for scholarships.
However, more than half the money the Lottery paid to scholarships actually came from the Lottery’s pool of unclaimed prize money. If this unclaimed prize money had not been available, $6.3 million — less than 17% of its revenue — would have been all that Arkansas’ college students would have received in June.
Altogether, the Arkansas Lottery’s gross revenue for Fiscal Year 2018 was the highest in its history. But only 18.4 cents of every dollar the Lottery made in FY18 went to scholarships. The rest went to salaries, overhead, marketing, prizes, contract fees, and other expenses.
For perspective, the typical lottery pays at least 30% of its revenue to education.
Since Day One, the Arkansas Lottery has been a major failure. It has rolled out more gambling more quickly than any other lottery we know, and the funding it allocates for education is among the worst in the nation.
Below is a breakdown of Lottery revenue for Fiscal Year 2018.
| Month | Gross Lottery Revenue | Paid to Scholarships | % Gross Revenue |
| July | $36,885,396.81 | $6,661,762.99 | 18.1% |
| August | 49,320,459.23 | 8,912,741.54 | 18.1% |
| September | 36,405,731.14 | 6,755,333.93 | 18.6% |
| October | 39,802,740.53 | 5,667,305.74 | 14.2% |
| November | 36,186,107.78 | 6,691,228.00 | 18.5% |
| December | 44,716,219.32 | 6,583,355.77 | 14.7% |
| January, 2018 | 44,063,056.11 | 8,230,861.00 | 18.7% |
| February | 39,389,927.57 | 5,947,647.50 | 15.1% |
| March | 53,523,320.61 | 7,945,570.02 | 14.8% |
| April | 42,064,194.78 | 7,192,997.10 | 17.1% |
| May | 40,447,182.69 | 8,037,624.80 | 19.9% |
| June | 37,685,874.97 | 13,364,612.64 | 35.5% |
| Total | $500,490,211.54 | $91,991,041.03 | 18.4% |
Photo Credit: Roman Oleinik [CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0) or GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html)], from Wikimedia Commons
Related posts:
Report: Lottery Still Pays 20-Cents on the Dollar for Scholarships
November Report: Lottery Gives Less Than 18 Cents on the Dollar to Scholarships
Arkansas Lottery Spends 19 Cents of Every Dollar on Scholarships in FY 2017
AR Lottery Gave Less Than 19 Cents of Every Dollar to Scholarships in November