Arkansas Lottery Still Budgeting Millions for Prizes, Little for Scholarships

The Arkansas Lottery continues to budget more than four times as much money for prizes as it does for college scholarships, according to the Lottery’s financial reports for November.

Since July 1 the Arkansas Lottery has spent $164.6 million on prizes, but only $40.8 million on students.

All told, only 17.5% of the Arkansas Lottery’s revenue has gone to college scholarships, but 70.8% has been spent on prizes for lottery players.

For perspective, the typical state-run lottery budgets approximately 60% of its revenue for prizes and 30% for education.

The Arkansas Lottery could pay millions of dollars more to scholarships if it simply would reduce its prize budget and raise its scholarship budget.

Below is a breakdown of Lottery revenue and prize spending since Fiscal Year 2021 began on July 1.

Scholarship Spending

Month	Gross Lottery Revenue	Paid to Scholarships	% Gross Revenue
July	$49,780,369.99	$8,592,573.93	17.3%
August	49,672,105.04	7,862,917.44	15.8%
September	47,501,224.72	7,691,576.99	16.2%
October	42,615,839.96	8,447,337.00	19.8%
November	43,115,514.84	8,207,598.88	19.0%
Total	$232,685,054.55	$40,802,004.24	17.5%

Prize Spending

Month	Gross Lottery Revenue	Total Prizes	% Going to Prizes
July	49,780,369.99	35,641,717.48	71.6%
August	49,672,105.04	35,023,856.83	70.5%
September	47,501,224.72	33,422,556.14	70.4%
October	42,615,839.96	29,995,072.50	70.4%
November	43,115,514.84	30,548,473.72	70.9%
Total	232,685,054.55	164,631,676.67	70.8%