Firm pushes for electronic bingo in state

Lawmakers to take a look; Beebe opposed, aide says

Arkansas’ lottery could sell about $18 million more a year in lottery tickets and raise about $4.8 million a year more for college scholarships if it launches an electronic bingo game, enabling players to watch winning numbers from frequent drawings on television screens in bars and restaurants, an Arkansas lottery vendor estimates. But Gov. Mike Beebe is opposed to the lottery offering an electronic bingo game because he doesn’t believe voters contemplated such a game when they approved Amendment 87 to the Arkansas

Constitution in 2008, said Beebe spokesman Matt DeCample.

Amendment 87 authorizes the Legislature to create a state lottery to raise funds for college scholarships. Former Lt. Gov. Bill Halter of North Little Rock led the campaign for the amendment.

Lottery Director Bishop Woosley has projected $459 million in tickets sales in fiscal 2014 with $89.5 million being raised for college scholarships under its current games.

With the help of $20 million a year in state general revenue, the lottery has financed the Arkansas Academic Challenge Scholarship for more than 30,000 students during each of the past four years.

Earlier this year, the Legislature overhauled the scholarship program, cutting the scholarship amounts for firsttime freshman recipients at four-year colleges from $4,500 to $2,000 a year. Lawmakers said the change was needed because officials had overestimated lottery revenue and underestimated the number of scholarship recipients.

The lottery’s dip in net proceeds led state Rep. Mark Perry, D-Jacksonville, to suggest in June that the Lottery Commission consider starting electronic monitor games on a trial basis.

Perry, co-chairman of the Legislature’s lottery oversight committee, said Tuesday that he expects lottery vendor Intralot to provide information about the bingo game to the nine-member lottery commission next month. The commission hasn’t discussed whether it is interested in authorizing the lottery to offer this game yet, but a few members have questioned whether voters meant for the lottery to offer monitor games when Amendment 87 passed in 2008.

Scott Hoss, senior marketing manager for the Athens, Greece-based Intralot, said the numbers for an electronic monitor game, such as bingo, are often drawn by a random-number generator about five minutes apart and the draw is played out on a television screen.

“What we wanted to do was to … give you a monitor game that we think would fit nice in Arkansas,” he told the lottery oversight committee during its meeting Tuesday. “We have a patent pending on this game. We are calling it monitor bingo.”

Arkansans already play bingo on scratch-off lottery tickets, and bingo also is played to raise money for charity in Arkansas’ bingo halls and some churches, Hoss said.

Under the monitor bingo game, a player would purchase a ticket for $2 with 25 spaces on it, watch the winning numbers being drawn on a television screen and play bingo somewhat like the traditional bingo game is played, “so he is marking his numbers as they are being drawn,” he said.

Players would win by matching patterns on their ticket or matching numbers that they have chosen or that are picked by the machine, Hoss said.

Draw- game tickets are more profitable for the lottery than scratch-off tickets, which make up about 80 percent of the lottery’s revenue, he said. Electronic bingo is a draw game, so “we can have it pay out a little bit less than [scratch-off tickets] so you are getting a wider margin on [draw] game tickets,” he added.

That prompted state Sen. Stephanie Flowers, D-Pine Bluff, to suggest, “Sounds like like we are trying to kind of manipulate money out of the pockets of the citizens.”

Hoss said the bingo monitor game could allow the lottery to expand its nearly 1,900 lottery retailers, because fewer than 1 percent of its retailers are bars and restaurants. In contrast, about 7.6 percent of the lottery retailers nationally are bars and restaurants, he said.

Intralot officials believe the lottery could add 250 to 300 bars and restaurants as lottery retailers if it offers the bingo monitor game, and the lottery could sell $18 million more a year in tickets if each retailer sold $60,000 in tickets a year, he said. That would mean an additional $4.8 million for scholarships, Hoss said.

Hoss said 15 states have monitor games, such as keno, horse racing and/or poker, with Massachusetts selling $800 million a year in tickets through its keno game.

Keno “is a bit more complicated” with 80 possible numbers. The player selects up to 10 numbers, and 20 of the 80 possible numbers are drawn, he said.

Four years ago, then-lottery Director Ernie Passailaigue said he hoped the Arkansas lottery would offer keno, something the South Carolina lottery, where he previously worked, didn’t do. But Beebe, a Democrat, and some lawmakers said they weren’t interested in offering keno, and the idea quietly fizzled.

Rep. Joe Jett, D-Success, said electronic bingo might be more acceptable than keno to some Arkansans. He noted that keno isn’t played in churches, but that bingo sometimes is.