Arkansas Lottery – Page 61

Lottery Commissioners Express Reservations About Review

Sep 26, 2014JerryArkansas LotteryArkansas Lottery

According to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, members of the Arkansas Legislature have approved bringing an outside group in to review the Arkansas Lottery, but lottery officials aren’t particularly thrilled about the idea.

Legislators want Camelot Global Services of Philadelphia to conduct a review of the Arkansas Lottery–presumably to look for inefficiencies and make recommendations on ways to improve the Arkansas Lottery. All told, the review is slated to cost about $169,500, and legislators want the Arkansas Lottery Commission to foot half the bill. According to the newspaper, however, at least 4 members of the Arkansas Lottery Commission have expressed reservations over paying for that.

Now, keep in mind that this is the same Lottery Commission that has approved expenditure after expenditure in the face of declining scholarship proceeds. This summer alone, the Arkansas Lottery: (more…)

Louisiana Lottery Makes Less Money, Pays Out More Than Arkansas

Sep 26, 2014JerryArkansas LotteryArkansas Lottery

For 5 years, now, we have written about what an exercise in futility the Arkansas Lottery has turned out to be.

It pulls hundreds of millions of dollars out of Arkansas’ economy, hurts families, and pays back far too little money in scholarship funding.

Lottery officials have reduced the lottery’s budget for scholarships to record-lows for Fiscal Year 2015, citing lagging ticket sales as the reason. If that’s the case, though, then how is it Louisiana’s state lottery has consistently paid out more in education funding than Arkansas despite taking in less money in lottery ticket sales?

Here are the Numbers.

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Lottery Proponents Don’t Understand Meaning of “Success”

Sep 19, 2014JerryArkansas LotteryArkansas Lottery

How do you define a “successful” state lottery?

Is it the lottery that sells the most tickets? The lottery that has the highest gross revenue? What about the lottery that awards the most scholarships? Or the lottery that does the least amount of harm to the local economy?

I would argue there really is no such thing as a “successful” state lottery, because lotteries pull money out of the local community and drag the economy down. That said, however, I really don’t think lottery proponents have a clear understanding of what a “successful” state lottery is, even under their own terms.

When the Arkansas Lottery was pitched to voters, proponents promised it would be a “world class” lottery “for education.” It would “generate” money for college scholarships and help more Arkansans go to college.

They even named it the Arkansas Scholarship Lottery. So in theory, the way you measure the Arkansas Lottery’s success is by the amount of scholarship money it pays out, right?

But that’s not the way lottery officials seem to measure its success at all. They are focused almost exclusively on gross ticket sales. This was underscored by a lottery consultant from Philadelphia who told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, yesterday, “Our objective … is to think about how we can get as many people to play the lottery as possible and spending really small amounts of money. We believe there is an opportunity for strong long-term sustainable, responsible growth.” (more…)