Arkansas Lottery Continues Spending Most of Its Money on Prizes

The Arkansas Lottery currently budgets 69% of its revenue for prizes, according to its latest monthly financial report.

The report indicates that about 16% of the Lottery’s revenue goes to college scholarships.

The Arkansas Lottery spends most of the money it makes on prizes for lottery players.

For perspective, the typical state lottery budgets approximately 30% of its revenue for education and about 60% for prizes.

Arkansas’ state-run lottery spends a larger portion of its revenue on prizes than the vast majority of state lotteries.

Below is a breakdown of Lottery revenue and prize spending for Fiscal Year 2021.

Scholarship Spending

MonthGross Lottery RevenuePaid to Scholarships% Gross Revenue
July$49,780,369.99$8,592,573.9317.3%
August49,672,105.047,862,917.4415.8%
September47,501,224.727,691,576.9916.2%
October42,615,839.968,447,337.0019.8%
November43,115,514.848,207,598.8819.0%
December50,329,644.305,970,922.5311.9%
January, 202162,994,737.2710,913,192.3217.3%
February42,099,444.225,592,370.9513.3%
Total$388,108,880.34$63,278,490.0416.3%

Prize Spending

MonthGross Lottery RevenueTotal Prizes% Going to Prizes
July$49,780,369.99$35,641,717.4871.6%
August49,672,105.0435,023,856.8370.5%
September47,501,224.7233,422,556.1470.4%
October42,615,839.9629,995,072.5070.4%
November43,115,514.8430,548,473.7270.9%
December50,329,644.3033,661,170.7566.9%
January, 202162,994,737.2741,745,065.1766.3%
February42,099,444.2227,955,512.1966.4%
Total$388,108,880.34$267,993,424.7869.1%

Arkansas Lottery Spends Almost $7,000 on Travel in a Month

Last month the Arkansas Lottery spent another $6,962.06 on mileage reimbursements for its employees, according to the State of Arkansas’ transparency website.

State employees receive 42 cents for every mile they travel on state business in their personal vehicles.

Since the fiscal year began on July 1, 2020, the Arkansas Lottery has paid its employees $104,128.10 in mileage reimbursements.

That’s enough to cover nearly 250,000 miles of driving!

All told, the Arkansas Lottery paid its employees for approximately 16,576 miles of travel — in a single month.

Many employees have received thousands of dollars in reimbursements for driving their personal vehicles on state business.

As we have written many, many times, the Arkansas Lottery probably could save a lot of money by using state vehicles for travel instead of paying employees to drive their personal vehicles.

Photo Credit: Airtuna08 at English Wikipedia [CC BY (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)]

Lottery Spends Another $18,000 in Travel Reimbursements

Last month the Arkansas Lottery spent another $17,898.04 on mileage reimbursements for its employees, according to the State of Arkansas’ transparency website.

State employees receive 42 cents for every mile they travel on state business in their personal vehicles.

Since the fiscal year began on July 1, 2020, the Arkansas Lottery has paid its employees $97,166.04 in mileage reimbursements.

That’s enough to cover over 230,000 miles of driving!

Some employees have received thousands of dollars for driving their personal vehicles on state business.

As we have written many, many times, the Arkansas Lottery probably could save a lot of money by using state vehicles for travel instead of paying employees to drive their personal vehicles.

Photo Credit: Airtuna08 at English Wikipedia [CC BY (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)]