Arkansas’ lottery will offer a new raffle game next month, and the Mega Millions jackpot game will be changed in October to offer larger jackpots, the lottery director told the Arkansas Lottery Commission on Monday.
Several commissioners discussed the possibility of providing incentives for the lottery’s 22 marketing and sales representatives to boost the lottery’s number of retailers and ticket sales in their respective areas, and commissioner John C. “Smokey” Campbell of Hot Springs suggested increasing the representatives’ mileage reimbursement from 42 cents per mile to 56.5 cents per mile.
But the commission’s marketing and retail committee decided to seek additional information about Campbell’s proposal before taking action.
The lottery’s ticket sales in July dropped by $720,994 from July 2012 to $33.078 million, while the amount the lottery transferred to college scholarships increased by $138,870 over a year ago to $4.89 million, lottery Director Bishop Woosley said.
About $747,000 in unclaimed prizes from last month will be transferred to college scholarships at the end of the the fiscal year, so the lottery ultimately will transfer $5.63 million to scholarships for July, which is $17,448 above the lottery’s budget projection for fiscal 2014, he said.
July was the first month in fiscal 2014.
Woosley has projected the lottery’s ticket sales at $459 million and the amount raised for college scholarships at $89.5 million in fiscal 2014.
In fiscal 2013, lottery ticket sales dipped by $33 million from the previous year to $440 million, and the amount raised for college scholarships slipped by $7.6 million to $89.9 million. More than 30,000 students have received lottery-financed Arkansas Academic Challenge scholarships during each of the past three school years.
Scratch-off tickets comprised about 81 percent of ticket sales, and the lottery expects to introduce about 46 new games in fiscal 2014, including Bass Pro Shops scratch-off tickets in September and St. Louis Cardinals scratch-off tickets in April, Woosley said.
He said the lottery will start a raffle game called Arkansas Million Dollar Raffle, starting Sunday, and will have three “early bird drawings” for a $10,000 winner and 10 $1,000 winners in each drawing to encourage people to buy tickets early before the Jan. 2 drawing for the $1 million prize.
People can purchase one raffle number for $10, three raffle numbers for $20, and six raffle numbers for $30, Woosley said.
The lottery plans to give out prizes totaling $1.71 million through the raffle game, including five $100,000 prizes, and “we can sell as many tickets as we want to [because] there is not a set amount of tickets,” he said.
The Mega Millions jackpot game will change starting in October and offer better overall odds and opportunities for larger jackpots, Woosley said.
The cost of the Mega Millions ticket will remain at $1, but the starting jackpot will increase from $12 million to $15 million and subsequent jackpots will increase by a minimum of $5 million rather than $1 million when no one wins, he said.
“We are hoping that the jackpot will grow faster,” Woosley said.
Woosley said the Mega Millions drawings will still consist of five white balls and one gold Mega ball, but the number of white balls will increase from 56 to 75 and the number of gold balls will decrease from 46 to 15.
The lottery’s number of retailers has remained fairly constant. It peaked at 1,920 during the lottery’s first year and was 1,893 at the end of fiscal 2013, said lottery sales director Robert Stebbins.
Commissioner Doug Pierce of Jonesboro suggested granting an incentive for the lottery’s sales and marketing representatives to meet their goals for the number of retailers and ticket sales in their areas of the state.
Woosley said the lottery can’t give cash bonuses to the lottery’s sales and marketing representatives under the state’s lottery law. But he said the commissioners could discuss the option of asking lawmakers to change the law.
Since the lottery can’t provide bonuses to the lottery’s 22 marketing and sales representatives under current law, Campbell suggested increasing their mileage reimbursements from 42 cents per mile to 56.5 cents per mile.
In fiscal 2012, the lottery paid nearly $194,000 in mileage reimbursements to the 22 employees based on about 430,000 miles driven, according to lottery records.
The mileage rate increase would only cost the lottery about $66,000 more per year, but would give each of the marketing and sales representatives an average of about $3,000 extra per year, Campbell said.
“We do have the legal right to do it,” Campbell said.
But several other commissioners, including Julie Baldridge of Little Rock and Dianne Lamberth of Batesville, said they want to study Campbell’s proposal.
“I’m concerned with the appearance of doing this without taking a close look at it,” said Baldridge, adding she is worried about how the Legislature’s lottery oversight committee could react to the proposal.
Lawmakers are reimbursed 56.5 cents per mile, while state employees are reimbursed 42 cents per mile.
Arkansas, Pages 9 on 08/27/2013