State lotteries are spending more than a half-billion dollars a year on pervasive marketing campaigns designed to persuade people to play often, spend more and overlook the long odds of winning.
Texas Lottery players no longer have the only option to buy tickets from the convenience store. They can simply download an app to buy tickets and see results.Located in a Hispanic neighborhood, the store sells Texas Loteria, a popular game marketed by the state lottery that resembles the iconic bingo lotería game in Mexico.
That’s not a statistic the lotteries advertise, and they don’t have to. As state agencies, they are exempt from Federal Trade Commission regulations that prohibit misleading and deceptive advertising.“The FTC does not regulate state lotteries because they are regulated at the state level, but the most important part is that we do not regulate them because they are not interstate commerce,” a commission spokesperson said.
The impact of the aggressive marketing is especially profound on lower-income Black and Hispanic populations. Studies have found they spend more on lottery games than other groups. Another 2021 study, by researchers from the Center for Gambling Studies at Rutgers University, found that most lottery websites admonished players to gamble responsibly but information on what that means was “inconsistent and sparse.”
“They’re not just any numbers, they’re your numbers. Play them today, and every day,” the narrator says.A tiny “Play responsibly” link at the bottom of the Virginia Lottery website leads to this statement: “At the Virginia Lottery, we encourage friendly competition and responsible play. We are committed to presenting all Virginia Lottery products in the most responsible and ethical manner.”
Lottery advertising plans also show that online lotteries are giving state lotteries the ability to track players and target them more directly.The 2019 Michigan Lottery marketing plan details how use of device-level data allowed tailoring of push notifications to “increase engagement and improve player retention with a seamless experience by delivering the right message, at the right time on the right platform.
But efforts to enforce it have faltered. A bill to prohibit the lottery from advertising in counties with a per-capita income below 150% of the poverty line and another to ensure advertising didn’t target any specific demographic both failed.
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