The Associated Press recently ran a news story about the new Lottery Director’s plans for the Arkansas Lottery.
Mr. Woosley’s plans sound pretty good at the outset: He wants to try to reduce costs, and see if he can squeeze more scholarship money out of the lottery’s bureaucracy. Not bad, right? We’ve been calling for the same thing for over two years now.
So what’s the problem? Read a little further in the article, and Mr. Woosley starts talking about doing more to promote Arkansas’ lottery games, keep prizes high, and even selling lottery tickets directly to customers instead of going through convenience stores.
We’ve talked over and over again about the tired argument that keeping prizes high generates more scholarship money in the long run. It simply doesn’t. If it did, the lottery probably would have met its scholarship goals the past two years. When it’s all said and done, if prizes are high, scholarships just don’t get as much money as they could otherwise. If you want proof, look at Louisiana’s lottery.
Lottery officials also talk about finding “regular” lottery players–that is, people who will play consistently. There’s another term for those folks: “Problem gamblers.” I’m not sure there’s any other way you can spin that. People who gamble consistently are generally considered to have a problem with gambling. Moreover, research elsewhere indicates those people are more likely to gamble out of desperation, trying to win money to cover their expenses for the month. It bothers me that the Arkansas Lottery might want to encourage that kind of behavior.
The Arkansas Lottery might be making a couple of steps in the right direction, but at the end of the day, it’s beginning to look as if little has changed except its leadership.
