The Ugly Underbelly of Lottery Marketing

A lottery is a game where the public pays money for a chance to win some prize, usually a cash amount, by drawing lots. The practice has a long history in the United States and elsewhere, with some lotteries serving as a painless form of taxation, especially during colonial America when many private lotteries helped to fund the construction of churches, colleges, canals, bridges, and even military expeditions against Native Americans. In fact, Benjamin Franklin tried to organize a lottery in 1776 to raise funds for cannons to defend Philadelphia against the British, but it was unsuccessful.

In modern times, state-sponsored lotteries are typically run as commercial promotions, with the public buying tickets for a future drawing, often weeks or months away. The prizes are usually a large sum of money or other valuable goods and services, and the chances of winning are usually very low. In contrast, privately organized lotteries offer smaller prizes and much higher odds.

Lotteries have become an important source of public revenue for governments, although they tend to attract a specific constituency that includes convenience store operators (the lottery is the most popular in many states); suppliers of lottery equipment and supplies (heavy contributions to state political campaigns by these firms are often reported); teachers in those states where lotteries are earmarked for education (though critics point out that the earmarking only reduces appropriations from the general fund for the purpose); and state legislators.

While there is an inextricable human impulse to gamble, the ugly underbelly of lottery marketing is that it dangles the promise of instant riches to people who live in societies where inequality and social mobility are already high. Furthermore, lotteries are regressive, with the bulk of players and revenues coming from middle-income neighborhoods and far fewer from poorer areas.