As many as 37 states and the District of Columbia have state lotteries, which generate about $100 billion each year for public purposes. But the history of lottery games in America has been a long and sometimes rocky one.
Lotteries are games of chance that offer prizes based on the drawing of numbers or symbols. Prizes can be cash or goods or services. The odds of winning vary depending on how many tickets are sold, the price of the ticket and the number of symbols or numbers required to win.
The origin of the lottery can be traced back to the 17th century, when it was common in the Netherlands to collect money through a lottery for a variety of uses. The oldest running lottery is the Dutch state-owned Staatsloterij, founded in 1726. Its name is derived from the Dutch noun “lot,” which means fate or luck.
By the time of the American Revolution, private lotteries were popular throughout the colonies. Benjamin Franklin sponsored a lottery in Philadelphia to raise funds for cannons for the war against the British. Thomas Jefferson sought a lottery to help alleviate his crushing debts. But both of these lotteries failed.
In the 1800s, religious and moral sensibilities turned against gambling of all forms. The same sentiments that eventually led to prohibition also worked against lotteries, says Matheson. “There were just a lot of people who saw the corruptness in them and tried to get rid of it,” he says. “You had a combination of things that put a lot of lotteries out of business.”
Today, lotteries are thriving in the United States. Americans spend more than $100 billion on lottery tickets each year. But the introduction of state lotteries in America has followed remarkably similar patterns.
New Hampshire was the first to introduce a state lottery in 1964, and other states followed suit soon afterward. When a state adopts a lottery, it legislates a monopoly for itself; establishes a government agency or public corporation to run the lottery (as opposed to licensing a private firm in exchange for a share of the profits); begins operations with a modest number of relatively simple games; and, under pressure to maintain or increase revenues, progressively expands its offerings.
A major challenge for any state lottery is to attract enough players to sustain the prize pool. Lottery games usually sell very few tickets in the early phases of their existence, but once the public becomes aware that there is a chance to win large sums of money, participation explodes.
In order to attract large numbers of players, a lottery must offer a wide range of games that appeal to all tastes and budgets. For example, it helps to have a low minimum jackpot and a lower cost per ticket. In addition, some lotteries allow people to choose their own numbers rather than a computer picking them for them. In these cases, people tend to choose numbers that are meaningful to them, such as birthdays or other personal identifiers. This makes them less likely to replicate the patterns of previous winning numbers.