Keno and Powerball: What’s the Difference?

Arkansas Lottery,

The Arkansas Lottery has decided to bring “monitor games” to the state later this summer despite objections from lawmakers. One of the first monitor games they apparently plan to roll out is, for lack of a better term, keno.

We’ve heard a few people describe the monitor games as “keno-like” or “similar to Powerball.” Many people do not know what keno is, and they assume it’s just another lottery game. Here’s a very brief breakdown of keno and a few ways it differs from your typical lottery (Note: For the sake of example, we are comparing Keno to Powerball, as Powerball is fairly standard lottery).

How Keno and Powerball Are Similar

Both are, essentially, “draw games.” In a “draw game,” players try to guess which numbers will be drawn from a pool of numbers. For instance, if I ask you to guess a number between 1 and 10, you could call that a “draw game.” I thought of (drew) one number out of ten possible numbers, and I asked you to guess which number I drew. This would be called a 1-from-10 lottery (one number chosen from ten possible numbers).

How Keno and Powerball are Different

  1. Keno draws more numbers from a bigger pool of potential numbers than Powerball.
  2. Keno’s odds are much worse than Powerball’s.
  3. Keno is traditionally played in casinos.

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Lottery Officials to Push for More Ad Money

1 CommentArkansas Lottery

Arkansas Lottery officials announced over the weekend that they plan to push for a half-a-million dollar increase in the lottery’s advertising budget.

If approved, the lottery would contract with advertisers to promote scratch-off tickets and capitalize on the Arkansas Lottery’s upcoming five year anniversary. The goal is to shore up lagging ticket sales.

We have written about how the Arkansas Lottery also plans to roll out “monitor games” in the coming year in an effort to boost ticket sales.

Of course, one has to wonder: If the Arkansas Lottery is as strapped for cash as many say, where is this extra $500,000 coming from?  How is it the Lottery has been forced to cut its scholarship budget over and over again, and yet it has an extra half-a-million dollars available for advertising?

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New Projections Show Monitor Games Will Not Save Lottery

Arkansas Lottery

In an article from today’s Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, State Senator Jimmy Hickey (R-Texarkana) is quoted as asking the Arkansas Lottery Commission to reconsider its decision to move forward with the “monitor games” we told you about a few weeks ago.

The games would be played over TV screens in bars, restaurants, or convenience stores, and could lead to miniature casinos popping up around Arkansas under the auspices of the lottery. Needless to say, many legislators are deeply concerned about this.

What is telling, however, are the revenue projections for these monitor games. The games are expected to bring in an additional $12.5 million in 2015, raising gross ticket sales to approximately $428.7 million for the year.

$428.7 million sounds like a lot of money, but it only translates into about $83 – $90 million for scholarships–far short of the lottery’s ever-illusive $100 million goal.

In other words, monitor games won’t make the Arkansas Lottery successful. They will only make it slightly less of a failure.

The Arkansas Lottery does not suffer from a ticket sales problem. It suffers from a management problem. Administrative costs are out of control, and the students who were supposed to reap the most benefit from the Lottery are consistently its lowest priority.

According to the Lottery’s own numbers, these monitor games arguably cannot save the Arkansas Lottery. With that in mind–and given the reservations so many people have expressed about the games–is there really any reason to implement them?

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