Lottery Advertising

A lottery is a gambling game in which people purchase tickets for a chance to win a prize. The prizes are usually cash or goods. Many states and the District of Columbia operate lotteries. The idea of winning a lottery is so appealing that people will spend enormous sums on tickets, even when the odds are very long. There are several ways to play a lottery, including instant-win scratch-off games, daily drawings and games where players choose numbers. The prize money is usually a sum of cash or an annuity that will be paid over three decades. State governments are the sponsors of most lotteries. They set the rules for the games and receive the majority of the ticket revenues. This arrangement has produced a host of issues.

When lotteries were first adopted in the immediate post-World War II period, they were often promoted as a way to expand state services without especially onerous taxation of working and middle classes. As time passed, however, these states came to depend on lottery revenues and were unable to cut back on them. This has made them dependent on a source of income that is not sustainable and which can be politically vulnerable to pressures for more spending. Moreover, the fact that lotteries are run as businesses with an eye to maximize profits has meant that their advertising is necessarily focused on persuading people to spend more money.

Lottery advertising is aimed at a broad group of potential customers, including convenience store operators (who have their own interests in winning a lottery), suppliers of prizes (heavy contributions by these companies to state political campaigns are routinely reported), teachers (in those states that allocate lottery money to education), and, most of all, the general public. Yet the disproportionate number of low-income Americans who play the lottery means that critics see these games as a disguised tax on those least able to afford them.

In addition to the regressive effect on poorer groups, lottery ads send another message: that playing the lottery is fun and something everyone should do. This message obscures the regressivity of lottery revenues and is intended to lull people into a false sense of security about the social impact of the industry. As a result, it contributes to compulsive gambling and an ugly underbelly of hopelessness that can lead people to take big risks for the faintest glimmer of a chance.