The official lottery offers fun, convenience and information to players on the go. Download the free app and see if you’re a winner. You can even scan your ticket’s barcode to instantly view Prizes Remaining and Game Details! You can also use the app to buy tickets and enter Second-Chance Drawings. Plus, you can create ePlayslips and check out the latest Lottery results, current jackpots and more!
The lottery, like any commercial product, responds to economic fluctuations. Its sales increase when incomes fall and unemployment rises, as they did in the teetering economy of the Great Recession. Its marketing campaigns, moreover, are usually highly targeted. Lottery ads are most prominent in neighborhoods that are disproportionately poor, Black, or Latino. Moreover, because of the low wages at which lottery products are sold, they are a common item on shopping lists; people pick them up while buying groceries or cashing checks at a dollar store.
Initially, lottery proponents promoted their games by arguing that states could fill their coffers without enraging anti-tax voters with a new form of taxation. But the evidence quickly put that fantasy to rest. State-run lotteries brought in only about two per cent of a state’s revenue in their first years, or about the same as what they spent on things such as parks and education.
Lottery opponents hailed from both political parties and every walk of life, with the most vociferous protests coming from devout Protestants, who regarded state-sanctioned gambling as morally wrong. (They were often mistaken: Cohen points out that bingo games hosted by Ohio Catholic high schools generated more money than the state’s lottery did.) Other critics worried about the effects of legalizing the lottery on race relations and the potential for state-sponsored gambling to promote criminal activity.
But even in the midst of the worst economic slump in memory, some people still bought tickets and took a chance on their favorite numbers. Some did so out of a sense of civic duty. Others did it because, as Cohen explains, “they thought that the state should be doing something to improve the lives of its citizens, and that the lottery was one way of raising funds for public services.”