The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
Connecticut Lottery wants millennials to play
When was the last time you walked into a place, say a convenience store, and bought a lottery ticket?
Your answer might depend on your age. If you are middle age or older, chances are you’ve picked up a scratch-off ticket or Powerball or Lotto at some point. But if you’re a millennial? Not likely.
I find this demographic trend interesting. CT Lottery folks find it alarming.
Without younger people buying into the lottery, eventually the revenue is going to trickle away — including profits that funnel into the state’s General Fund. This is no small amount: We’re talking about $1.3 billion in sales last year with 30 percent of that going right into the state’s checkbook.
The solution, CT Lottery officials believe, is to allow game purchases over the internet. Voilà — iLottery.
“We’re becoming a cashless society,” said Chelsea Turner, vice president of CT Lottery. “We have to be able to modernize like other businesses.”
The idea is to let people who don’t walk around with dollar bills in their wallets anymore to get a Powerball or Lotto ticket or such over the internet with their phone. Their data indicates this would reach those “predominately in their 30s.”
“We are confident we can create new players,” Turner said.
We spoke Monday afternoon in a Hearst Connecticut Editorial Board meeting that included CT Lottery President and CEO Gregory Smith, Counsel Andrew Walter, and Public Relations Director Tara Chozet. On the other side of the table at Hearst Connecticut headquarters in Norwalk were my editorial page counterparts John Breunig of Stamford Advocate and Greenwich Time, and Hugh Bailey of the Connecticut Post and New Haven Register.
(Edit boards are fascinating. We hear pitches and get to ask questions of politicians, organization leaders, agency heads and others. These sessions help inform our editorial positions. In this column, I’m speaking just for myself, not the full editorial board.)
“Our five-year projections total over $50 million in new General Fund revenue,” Smith said. That’s a lot of scratch.
Who’s not playing
“Only a third of Americans aged 18 to 29 said they played the lottery in the past year, compared with 61 percent for those aged 50 to 64, according to a 2016 Gallup survey,” CNBC reported in February 2017.
A report by International Game Technology, a gaming industry resource, spotlights the potential.
“By 2020, millennials are expected to control between $19 trillion to $24 trillion of the global economy, and 48 percent play a favorite game at least once a week — yet they tend not to play the lottery,” noted the 2017 report “Millennials Matter: Tapping Into the Preferences of a Game-Changing Demographic.”
Millennial refers to those born between 1981 and 1997 and are about one-quarter of the global population.
“There may not be much love for the lottery amongst millennials, but they enjoy their non-lottery gaming more than most other generations,” the IGT report stated.
What do millennials want? Convenience.
o“Given that smartphone ownership amongst millennials in the United States is at 87 percent, convenience primarily means mobile access. However, the limited availability of digital payment for lottery is not meeting the demand of the 63 percent of millennials who shop on their mobile phones each day or the 38 percent of millennials who have made a purchase on their mobile device within the past week,” the report noted.
Connecticut’s relationship with gambling
CT Lottery officials, whose job it is to make money for the state, know all this. Which explains why they asked legislators to allow online tickets for games.
The result was Senate Bill 1015, to “authorize the Connecticut Lottery Corporation to offer online lottery draw games.”
Although the state Office of Fiscal Analysis projected a “potential net revenue gain to the General Fund of $4.7 million in FY 20 and $7.6 million in FY 21,” it “assumes that selling lottery draw game tickets online does not violate the agreements between the state and the tribes” — the Mashantucket Pequots and the Mohegans. During a March hearing, Chuck Bunnell, chief of staff for the Mohegan Tribe, said the tribe was “concerned” about the Lottery expanding to the internet and possibly violating the compact.
That could explain why what would seem to be a simple bill ended up getting referred to a study, which must report by Feb. 5, the start of the next General Assembly session.
Actually, gambling in Connecticut is an interwoven thicket right now. There are fights over new casinos (or we could politely call it negotiations) in Bridgeport or East Windsor, to join the two established casinos run separately by the tribes in southeastern Connecticut. And then there’s sports wagering, allowed last year by the U.S. Supreme Court, with the tribes, companies such as Sportech, and the CT Lottery all wanting in on it. A bill to allow sports betting didn’t get adopted by the General Assembly this term, but could pop up in the special session.
It makes sense to me to allow Connecticut’s lottery to sell tickets online with mobile apps, as 10 other states do. Lottery officials say that their 2,900 retailers, such as convenience stores, would not see a drop in their revenue. They get 5 percent; by the way, players get 60 percent.
No drop because they see more people — millennials, in particular — buying lottery tickets. And that’s the part that makes me feel uneasy. Is it responsible for the state to promote broader gambling, even though it does bring in millions each year?
Perhaps that question had more relevance before Connecticut allowed the lottery. At least an online version would actually have more controls. People could sign up with only one debit or credit card and limits, maybe weekly, would be set. In the existing system there is no cap — anyone can walk into any number of stores in a day and spend all their money on lottery tickets.
In recognition gambling can be harmful, the lottery commission would increase by $500,000 the annual contribution to the state Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services’ chronic gamblers treatment and rehabilitation account.
We’ve got the lottery. Odds are, even millennials will end up seeing that $1 ticket as a dream to becoming an instant millionaire.