Arkansas Lottery – Page 67

Lottery Lowers Scholarship Goal, Shows Evidence of Poor Management

Feb 20, 2014JerryArkansas LotteryArkansas Lottery

The Arkansas Lottery is “a success story” compared to other state lotteries, but it’s reducing its college scholarship budget for the year.

That’s what lottery officials said in a meeting yesterday. The Arkansas Lottery is reducing scholarship projections for 2014 by roughly $6.8 million. This tracks with what we wrote last week about how the Arkansas Lottery is on target to come in nearly $8 million under budget on scholarships this year.

If you read the news coverage from yesterday’s meeting, it seems as if lottery officials are ready to blame the budget shortfall on everything and everybody except themselves. The lottery is allegedly struggling because they can’t accept credit or debit cards; because they can’t sell lottery tickets online; because they can’t do monitor games; because scratch-off ticket sales are down; and because they took a loss on a new raffle game.

But lottery officials say Arkansas’ lottery is “a success story” compared to other state lotteries, because we are sixteenth out of forty-five states in lottery ticket sales, per-capita.

Something about those statements just doesn’t add up.

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Lottery Could Pay Higher Scholarships Even If Sales Dropped by Millions?

Feb 13, 2014JerryArkansas LotteryArkansas Lottery

An old myth keeps resurfacing about the Arkansas Lottery: The idea that by not allocating a large percentage of its revenue for scholarships each year, the Arkansas Lottery is somehow more profitable and able to “generate” more scholarship money in the long-run.

Currently, about 19% – 20% of the Lottery’s revenue goes to scholarship. Lottery proponents say if the Arkansas Lottery were required to allocate 30% of its gross revenue for scholarships (like many state lotteries), it would have less money to spend on promotional activity and prizes, which drive lottery ticket sales. By letting the Arkansas Lottery allocate a smaller percentage of revenue for sales, the Lottery is able to spend more money on prizes, which leads to more lottery ticket sales and–ultimately–more college scholarships.

To put it bluntly, this idea is complete nonsense. To prove it, let’s do the math.

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Will the Arkansas Lottery Reduce Its Scholarship Budget Next Week?

Feb 12, 2014JerryArkansas LotteryArkansas Lottery

Yesterday the Arkansas Lottery released its financial report for the month of January. The report shows lottery ticket sales and net proceeds for college scholarships are still lagging.

In December, we wrote how at the rate things are going, the Arkansas Lottery stands to come in about $8 million short of its scholarship goal for 2014. According to the Lottery Commission’s budget, the Arkansas Lottery needs to allocate about $7.4 million per month, on average, to meet its goal of $89.5 million in scholarship money for the year. So far, however, these monthly reports show the Arkansas Lottery has allocated more like $6.4 – $6.8 million for scholarships each month.

That’s a shortfall of nearly $1 million every month.

Lottery Director Bishop Woosley recently hinted if lottery ticket sales did not improve soon, the Arkansas Lottery Commission might have to reevaluate its scholarship budget for the year. According to its website, Lottery Commissioners are scheduled to meet next week.

In light of this latest report revealing the Arkansas Lottery’s situation has not improved, one has to wonder if adjusting the scholarship budget will be a topic at next week’s meeting.

See the Arkansas Lottery’s financial report for the month of January here.