Lottery Gives Students Less Than 14 Cents of Every Dollar Despite Good December

Today the Arkansas Lottery released its financial report for the month of December.

The report shows that the Arkansas Lottery took in more than $46.1 million last month, but paid less than $6.4 million to college scholarships — 13.8% of the Arkansas Lottery’s total revenue.

The Arkansas Lottery actually made nearly $275,000 more in December of 2019 than it did in December of 2018, but it still paid nearly $279,000 less to college scholarships.

In other words, the Arkansas Lottery made more money last December than the December before, but gave less money to students.

In fact, December of 2019 appears to have been one of the the best Decembers in the Arkansas Lottery’s history, in terms of revenue, but scholarship funding remained low.

This tracks with what we have said before: The Arkansas Lottery appears to be budgeting less money for college scholarships this year, but there isn’t a clear reason why.

So far this fiscal year the Arkansas Lottery has spent only 14.5% of its gross revenue on scholarships. For perspective, the average state lottery spends 30%.

Below is a breakdown of lottery revenue and scholarship funding so far in Fiscal Year 2020.

Related posts:

AR Lottery Gives Scholarships Less Than 23 Cents on the Dollar in July November Report: Lottery Gives Less Than 18 Cents on the Dollar to Scholarships AR Lottery Gives Scholarships Less Than 20 Cents of Every Dollar in October Arkansas Lottery Gives Students Paltry 18 Cents of Every Dollar in September