State Lottery Games

State lottery games are played in almost all of the states in America, and I wonder if an argument could be made for similar games in other countries, including the UK.

Although a state lottery will never be able to offer prizes that are as big as those offered by multi-state lotteries such as Powerball, national lotteries such as Lotto or international lotteries like EuroMillions, there are advantages to state lotteries that most people don’t consider.

The main advantage in my opinion is the fact that the money raised by a state lottery is used to help that particular state. The Texas Lottery therefore benefits the people of Texas, whilst the New York Lottery serves the people of New York. This means that players can participate in the knowledge that a percentage of their hard-earned cash will be used to help their own community, rather than ending up funding a project at the other end of the country that they will never be able to benefit from.

Another advantage of the state lottery system is that money that a good percentage of prize money won will often be channelled back into the local economy. For example, if someone wins $1 million playing the Texas Lottery, that person might buy a new home, a new car and various other things in the state of Texas itself. The same cannot be said of many larger lotteries where the prize money could end up at the opposite end of the country.

Although countries such as France, Spain and the UK don’t have states (and they could not therefore have true state lotteries) they do have regions, provinces and suchlike, each of which might benefit from a lottery of its own. For example, in the UK we could have a separate lottery for England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. Another idea might be to have a lottery for each county throughout the UK.

To be perfectly honest I doubt that this will happen in the foreseeable future, but I do believe that modelling the state lottery example is something that could benefit lottery players in all countries. We don’t necessarily have to sacrifice our larger lottery games either. Many players would be willing to participate in both a national and a local lottery, especially if they get to see some real benefit from the latter in their own communities and neighbourhoods.

Article Last Updated: 22/06/2010 15:31:58

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