Tag: Lottery

Arkansas Lottery Still Relying on Scratch-Off Tickets, Rolling Out New Games

The Arkansas Lottery still relies heavily on scratch-off tickets, and it is frequently rolling out new lottery games in its ongoing effort to entice people to gamble.

On October 1 the lottery unveiled four new instant tickets — including the “Ultimate Riches” ticket that sells for $10 each. The odds of winning Ultimate Riches’ top prize are approximately one in 400,000.

Statistically, people who buy this $10 lottery ticket will lose their money more than 60% of the time.

Unfortunately the Arkansas Lottery has a long history of relying on expensive scratch-off tickets with long odds and large prizes to encourage people to gamble. To date, the lottery has rolled out 46 new scratch-off tickets this year alone. Five of the lottery’s current ticket lines sell for $20 apiece.

The bulk of the Arkansas Lottery’s ticket sales down through the years have come from scratch-off tickets, which are often associated with problem gambling and gambling addiction.

He have written before about how expensive scratch-off tickets prey on the truly desperate. They entice Arkansans to spend a lot of money on a single lottery ticket in hopes of a big payout, but more often than not people lose.

Family Council has supported legislation in the past that would restructure the Arkansas Lottery’s budget to increase spending on education.

The state-run lottery could provides millions of dollars more in scholarship funding if it simply would reduce its prize budget, increase its scholarship budget to align with other state lotteries, and quit relying so heavily on scratch-off tickets.

Unfortunately, there simply doesn’t seem to be much impetus to do that.

Articles appearing on this website are written with the aid of Family Council’s researchers and writers.

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