MA Lottery Players Spend Three Times US Average

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Thursday, March 15, 2012

Jaclyn Cashman, GoLocalWorcester News Editor

Massachusetts lottery players spend three times the National average trying their luck with the lotto, according to a recent survey.

A Bloomberg Survey finds Bay Staters spent $860.70 per adult annually on the lottery. But they were also the biggest winners, according to the survey, getting back almost 72 cents on the dollar. The state still places second on the “Sucker Index”. With a per capita income of $51,302, Massachusetts residents spent 1.3 percent of their income playing these games, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

Despite the high chances of winning, some Central Massachusetts residents stay away from scratch tickets, Keeon Callender said, "I want to, but my emotions won't let me. I know people who play, but they always lose. I don't do well with rejection, and the lottery is a form of mass rejection."

Paul Sternburg, Director of the Massachusetts Lottery, told GoLocalWorcester that they keep the chances of winning very high so more people are willing to play. Sternberg said, “We make people millionaires 2.5 times a week, that’s 130 times a year.” Lottery player, Deborah Hackett, hasn’t been so lucky. Hackett, said, "I've played and I've played lots. I've also lost lots, but it's the excitement and the rush of playing."

Sternburg said “We paid over $3.1 billion in prizes last year, so there are a lot of winners out there. Massachusetts has always had the highest payout. I don’t think we can go any higher. If we went any higher, we’d be hurting our net profits.”

Massachusetts got high marks for returning 95 percent of lottery revenue to its municipalities. The survey claimed $802.2 million was returned to the state for the fiscal year that ended June 30, 2011. Sternburg said they keep their overhead low at two percent and give about 5 percent to their vendors and then the rest goes back to the Commonwealth.

Sternburg said the casino law that passed in Massachusetts will most likely have a negative impact on the lottery at first. He predicts anywhere from three to ten percent. Sternburg said, “We will be preparing for this by creating new games to create more buzz around the lottery.” But there will always be the loyal scratch ticket players like Donna Burford of Worcester who said, "I play scratch tickets, but I don't play the normal lotto a lot. I like the instant gratification of the scratch offs."

Bloomberg claims, more than $50 billion was spent on lottery tickets in the U.S. in 2010, while prizes totaled $32.8 billion.

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