Over the years we have written time and again about expensive scratch-off tickets at the Arkansas Lottery — tickets that sell for $10 or $20 apiece instead of $1 or $2.
Scratch-off lottery tickets are controversial, because they are associated with problem gambling and gambling addiction.
In the past, researchers have compared scratch-off tickets to “paper slot machines.”
A 2018 study published in the Journal of Behavioral Addictions found a link between how often a person played scratch-off tickets and the severity of a person’s gambling problem.
High-dollar scratch-off tickets are even more controversial, because the combination of long odds and big jackpots may encourage people to buy them out of desperation.
For example, in November of 2021 the Arkansas Lottery rolled out its “$1,000,000 Riches” scratch-off ticket.
The ticket sells for $20. The odds of winning the top prize of $1 million are approximately 1 in 800,000.
Scratch-off tickets like this one offer big payouts to people who may be living on very little money.
That means they are likely to entice people to play the lottery out of desperation in hopes of “hitting it big.”
Statistically speaking, a person who spends $20 on one of these scratch-off tickets has a two-thirds chance of losing.
Right now the Arkansas Lottery sells several varieties of scratch-off tickets for $10 and $20 each.
The vast majority of the money the Arkansas Lottery makes from scratch-off tickets pays for prizes for a handful of lottery players. Very little goes to Arkansas’ students.
As long as the Arkansas Lottery continues to operate this way, it will keep preying on the poor and desperate, and the Lottery’s scholarship funding will remain low.
