Tag: Arkansas Lottery

Will the Lottery Be Selling Tickets to University Students Saturday?

Will the Arkansas Lottery be selling lottery tickets to university students this Saturday? That’s a question raised by a press release from Lottery officials.

Earlier this year the Arkansas Lottery secured funding to do promotional activities on college campuses in Arkansas. We asked, at that time, if the Lottery meant to sell lottery tickets to students. Yesterday, Lottery officials elaborated on their plans, saying that this weekend “[s]tudents, parents, faculty, alumni and football fans attending select home games can stop by the Arkansas Scholarship Lottery pre-game celebration area for games, giveaways and information about the scholarship program.”

Now, one has to ask just what types of “games” and “giveaways” they mean. Will they include lottery tickets?

This is important, because research consistently indicates teens and young adults are among those most prone to develop gambling problems.

Lottery officials may think that if they get college students to start buying lottery tickets now, those students will be lottery “customers” for years to come. However, micro-targeting teens and young adults is irresponsible. It has the potential to create more gambling addiction and could lead to ruined lives, down the road.

We’ll probably know more about the Lottery’s intentions after Saturday. In the meantime, we will continue to monitor this situation.

Photo Credit: “Gameday2” by Rmcclen at en.wikipedia – Transferred from en.wikipedia by Ronhjones. Licensed under Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.

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Arkansas Lottery Scholarship Funding to Hit All-Time Low in 2015

Since the Arkansas Lottery’s inception, we have written over and over again about the paltry percent of gross revenue the Arkansas Lottery Commission awards for college scholarships.

When the Arkansas Lottery began five years ago this month, we calculated that only about 22% of lottery revenue went to students. The rest went somewhere else. That meant if you bought a $1 lottery ticket, only 22 cents of that dollar went to scholarships. At the time, that was the third-lowest percentage in the nation.

Despite efforts by lawmakers to require the Arkansas Lottery to set aside a minimum percentage of its revenue for students, lottery officials continued reducing that percentage of gross revenue. We have seen the percentage allocated for scholarships drop all the way from 22 cents on the dollar to 19.8 cents on the dollar (last year).

Now the Arkansas Lottery Commission has reduced it again, with only 18.76% of gross revenue going to scholarships.

Under its budget for 2015, the Arkansas Lottery hopes to take in about $416,770,000 in gross revenue, and it hopes to pay out $78,185,000 in scholarships. That means for the first time ever, lottery scholarships will receive less than 19% of the Arkansas Lottery’s total revenue.

Just to put those numbers in perspective, Louisiana requires its lottery to allocate at least 35% of lottery revenue for education. That’s how the Louisiana lottery paid out tens of millions of dollar more in education funding than Arkansas’ did despite taking in nearly $100 million less.

It isn’t just Louisiana, either. Many state lotteries set aside at least 25% – 30% for education funding.

People keep talking about trying to bolster lottery ticket sales to improve scholarship funding, but when your lottery isn’t required to set aside a minimum percentage of its revenue for scholarships, there’s no guarantee soaring ticket sales will do any good for Arkansas’ students. After all, the way the law is currently written, the Lottery Commission could approve a budget that pays $0 for scholarships. It’s all up to them.

The Arkansas “Scholarship” Lottery continues cutting its scholarship budget and refusing to set aside even an average percentage of its revenue for education. That’s simply unacceptable.

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Lottery Commission Lowers Budget for 2015

According to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, on Wednesday the Arkansas Lottery Commission lowered its budget for the next year, cutting scholarship funding by $3 million to a total $78.2 million. This is $3.3 million less than the Arkansas Lottery paid in scholarships this past year.

We have written before how the Arkansas Lottery Commission has struggled to live up to its promises. Scholarship funding has never reached the levels promised in 2008; the Arkansas Lottery Commission has cut scholarship funds time and time again, but has somehow managed to afford new employees, raises, and bonuses; and lottery officials, in the past, have openly defied members of the Arkansas Legislature.

We’ve been saying it for nearly five years, but the problem down at the Arkansas Lottery Commission is not a revenue problem or a budget problem; it’s a priorities problem. Scholarships are the last bill the Lottery pays and the first thing they cut if ticket sales drop. This latest budget cut is simply another verse in that same old song.

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