The California State Lottery recently rolled out a point-of-sale device called a “check-a-ticket” machine. A player slips a lottery ticket in the machine’s bar-code reader and a scrolling LED message pronounces the ticket a winner or loser.
Most of the time, the display tells the player, “Sorry,” but you are not a winner.
“We call it our sorry machine,” a clerk at a Los Angeles grocery store explained as a scratch-off ticket player got the bad news from the check-a-ticket machine. More than four decades after New Hampshire became the first U.S. state to sponsor a lottery, “sorry” is a pretty accurate description of the current condition of lotteries. From California to New Jersey, lotteries are underperforming. Sales are stagnant, and profits as a percentage of sales are down. The problem is an aging product and customer base, feeble and ineffective marketing strategies and increased competition from Indian casinos and Internet gambling.
In the midst of this slump, states are looking for ways to patch gaping budget holes without raising taxes. For some, lottery privatization looks like fast and easy money.
For more information, please see Anne Burke, The Privatization Gamble , IGWB, July 11, 2008.
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