Lotteries—Why So Popular?
WHY do people play the lottery? “It’s entertaining, it’s fun,” said a lottery-board spokeswoman. Maybe so, but the main appeal surely is the prize money. Just about everybody could use a little extra money. And lotteries promise a lot of money. In today’s uncertain world of escalating prices, stock-market crashes, and dead-end jobs, millions of people believe that winning the lottery is the only imaginable way for them to become fabulously rich.
Adding to the appeal, lotteries are uncomplicated and easy to play. There are many variations, such as Lotto, numbers, and games where you scratch the paper to reveal hidden numbers, but all of these share two features. The first is that players win when the numbers on their ticket match those drawn by the organizers. Second, unlike other forms of gambling, no special skill or knowledge is required to win. Winning or losing is a matter of sheer chance.
People also play lotteries because it’s easy to buy tickets. Most Americans can buy them at the local grocery store. Elsewhere, if a lottery booth is not nearby, players can place bets by mail, telephone, telex, or fax.
What’s New About Lotteries?
Are lotteries new? Not at all. At festivities in ancient Rome, emperors Nero and Augustus gave away slaves and property as prizes. One of the first recorded cash prizes was probably paid in 1530 by a lottery in Florence, Italy. In the centuries that followed, lotteries flourished in Europe. Lotteries thrived in early America too, bringing in money that helped finance Jamestown, the Continental Army, and the building of prestigious universities, such as Harvard, Dartmouth, Yale, and Columbia.
In the 19th century, however, the business ran into trouble. Opposers railed against mass gambling and charged that drawings were rigged. Lotteries were riddled with bribery, corruption, and criminal involvement. Private promoters raked in enormous profits. As a result, lotteries in the United States, France, and Britain were banned.
End of story? Obviously not. Lotteries had continued to thrive elsewhere—Italy, for example, and Australia. Spain’s Carlos III created a lottery in 1763; its modern version was established by law in 1812. Country after country leaped aboard the lottery bandwagon. In 1933, France lifted its ban and established the Loterie nationale. Also in the 1930’s, Ireland set up its famous Irish Hospitals’ Sweepstake. Japan’s Takarakuji got started in 1945. Britain OK’d football pools and premium bond drawings, lotteries in fact if not in name. And in 1964 the United States got back into the business.
Then in the 1970’s, two developments transformed the lottery operation. The first was the introduction of computers linked to retail terminals. Now it was possible to organize high-volume, high-frequency games in which players could choose their own numbers. No longer was it necessary to wait weeks or months to see if they’d won; players could find out in days, hours, or even minutes.
The second development was the introduction of Lotto, a game where the odds against winning are high. In Lotto, when the jackpot isn’t won, it is carried over into succeeding games. Consequently, the prize money can build to millions of dollars. With Lotto, sales soared, and business became big, really big.
Appeal to Promoters
Why do governments promote gambling? Because it’s an easy way to bring in money without raising taxes. Whereas slot machines and roulette give back in prize money as much as 95 percent of what they take in, lotteries pay back less than 50 percent. For example, in the United States in 1988, about 48 cents of every lottery dollar was paid back in prizes and 15 cents went for promotion, sales, and administration. The remaining 37 cents was used to fund public improvements, education, health care, and aid to the elderly. Nationwide, that amounted to $7.2 thousand million.
But governments do not organize lotteries just to make money. If they do not get into the business, they may lose money. Their citizens might play elsewhere. So when one country or state starts a lottery, its neighbors come under pressure to do the same. This snowballing effect is evident in the United States. In 1964 there was one State lottery; in 1989 there were 30.
Dreams of Wealth
Of course, there are plenty of people who are trying to get a piece of the consumer dollar. So how do promoters convince the public to spend money on lotteries? Advertising! Call in the professionals of persuasion!
Do advertisements stress that a portion (albeit small) of the proceeds will help fund education or provide care for the elderly? Far from it! That’s rarely mentioned. Instead, ads stress how much fun it would be to win millions of dollars. Here are a few examples:
◻ “The Fabulous Lifestyle of the Rich & Famous Could be Yours Instantly . . . When You Play Canada’s Celebrated, Multi-Million Dollar LOTTO 6/49.”
◻ “THE FLORIDA LOTTERY . . . Get Rich in America’s Greatest Lottery.”
◻ “Money Made in Germany—STRIKE IT RICH and become a Millionaire overnight.”
Hard sell? It certainly is! Efforts to tone down advertising usually end when tickets don’t sell. In fact, promoters turn to ever more intense games and marketing to entice new players and to keep the old ones interested. Promoters must constantly offer something that looks new. Oregon’s lottery director James Davey said: “We have gambling themes, we do Olympics. At Christmas we do Holiday Cash. With Lucky Stars we play on people’s astrological signs. We find that if you run two or three, four or five games at the same time, you’ll sell more tickets.”
But the biggest attraction by far is a gigantic jackpot. In Lotto, when the prize money soars, as it did when it reached $115 million in Pennsylvania in 1989, it becomes big news. People stampede to buy tickets in what one author called a “gambler’s feeding frenzy.” Amid the hysteria, even those who don’t normally play the lottery reach for their money.
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Gambling Fever and Religion
“The Catholic Church has taught me to gamble. Bingo and raffles are absolutely no different from lotteries. If the Catholic Church would take the lead and stop all gambling, I would reconsider the idea of refraining from playing the lottery. If I am greedy, it is because it’s almost a sacrament in the Church.”—Reader to the U.S. Catholic magazine.
“After the Sunday Mass, the second best-attended function at Catholic churches are the weekly bingo games, according to a survey of Catholic parishes by Notre Dame University.” However, several priests claim that most of those who attend the bingo games do not go to church.—The Sunday Star-Ledger, New Jersey, U.S.A.
“Saint Pancras Brought Good Luck to Madrid” was the headline in the Spanish weekly ABC, international edition. The article continued: “‘It was Saint Pancras’ exclaimed again and again the two employees of the lottery store . . . where they had sold the only series of 21515, the ‘gordo’ [big one] worth 250 million [pesetas, or today, $2,500,000, U.S.], which has been distributed in Madrid. [The employees] confessed that they had prayed to the saint, whose image presides over their establishment and on which they had placed a sprig of parsley, to have the good fortune to sell the Christmas ‘gordo.’”
“Trying to find ways to explain their good fortune, the older winners tended to believe that God and destiny had singled them out to win the money. . . . ‘We want to believe that good fortune and bad fortune are attributed to something, not an accident,’ said Dr. Jack A. Kapchan, a psychology professor at the University of Miami. ‘And what else is there to attribute it to but God?’”—The New York Times.
What does the Bible say about good luck? To the unfaithful in Israel, Jehovah said: “But you men are those leaving Jehovah, those forgetting my holy mountain, those setting in order a table for the god of Good Luck and those filling up mixed wine for the god of Destiny.”—Isaiah 65:11.
How many of the relatively few winners stop to think that their isolated good fortune is based on the bad fortune of millions of losers? Does gambling reflect ‘love of neighbor’ in any way? Is it reasonable or Biblical to think that the Sovereign Lord of the universe should involve himself in such selfish vices as gambling?—Matthew 22:39.