JG-TC.com > News > With economy down, lottery sales up

TODAY'S HEADLINES

SPECIAL SECTION

ONLINE POLL

ONLINE EXTRAS

SITE TOOLS

OTHER LINKS

St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Lee Enterprises

Friday, July 25, 2008 9:57 PM CDT
With economy down, lottery sales up

By MIKE RIOPELL, JG/T-C Springfield Bureau

SPRINGFIELD — Illinoisans apparently haven’t lost an appetite for lottery tickets, even though many are pinching pennies elsewhere in their personal budgets.

Sales figures for the Illinois Lottery were up nearly 3 percent — to about $2.08 billion — in the fiscal year that ended in June.

In the year before, the lottery hit $2 billion in sales for the first time. Both increases come with a steady increase in the popularity of the lottery’s instant games.

Illinois Lottery Superintendent Jodie Winnett said Friday that the state is planning to start a study on trends of lottery play during tough economic times. She said she now has only theories about why sales remain up.

One theory, Winnett said, is that people might need some financial hope in lottery tickets, and the chance to win a lot of money doesn’t cost very much. The odds of winning, though, often can be exceptionally long.

“It’s just a dollar,” Winnett said.

Also Friday came news of a study showing that people who view themselves as low-income are more likely to buy lottery tickets.

Published in the July issue of the Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, the study suggests people who feel they’re poor are more likely to take risks.

Emily Haines, an author of the study, said that behavior could explain why lottery sales stay steady, or even rise, when the economy falls.

“Maybe it’s because they’re trying to make up for what they’ve lost,” said Haines, a doctoral student at Carnegie Mellon University.

Winnett says the state lottery uses focus groups to help drive interest in instant games, a process that could explain the jump in sales on the scratch-off tickets from about $780 million in the 2004 fiscal year, to $1.1 billion last year.

A full list of lottery games can be found at www.illinoislottery.com.

Contact Mike Riopell at mike.riopell@lee.net or 789-0865

Add your comments

*Member ID:
*Password:
Remember login? (requires cookies)
	Forgot Your Password?

Not already registered?
Then click Here.

Comment policy:

JG-TC.com encourages readers to engage in civil conversation with their neighbors. Comments that are submitted are not posted to the site immediately. They go into a queue to be moderated and may take several hours to be reviewed. Comments posted on Saturday may not be reviewed until Sunday afternoon.

In order to keep the page a set width, long lines (mostly long links) will be chopped. Try putting spaces in your links or consider using tinyurl.com to make a smaller link that you can include.

We will never edit or alter your comments, but we do reserve the right to remove comments that violate our code of conduct.

No comment may contain:

* Potentially libelous statements; such as accusing somebody of a crime, defamation of character, or statements that can harm somebody's reputation.
* Obscene, explicit, or racist language.
* Personal attacks, insults, threats, harassment or inciting violence.
* Commercial product promotions.

If you have any questions, please contact our moderator.