A Chicago Tribune investigation recently revealed Illinois kept 15 instant scratch-off games on the market for weeks or months after top prizes have been awarded. Between mid-November and mid-March, the lottery sold more than 3 million instant game tickets for a total of $20.7 million although top prizes no longer were available for those games, according to the Tribune’s analysis. Early last month, nearly 1 in 6 games still being sold did not have a top prize available.
Lottery officials said continuing to allow instant game sales after top prizes are awarded has been a long-time lottery policy, and it’s printed on the backs of tickets. However, players only can discover that after they have bought a ticket; it’s not displayed online, at the thousands of stores where tickets are sold or through lottery vending machines. Lottery officials said the lottery’s website lists if a game still has a top prize available; however, the Tribune found those lists sometimes are not updated for up to two weeks.
Stop Predatory Gambling Director Les Bernal said, “If they did operate with integrity, and tell people that these top prizes might not be available, people wouldn’t buy these tickets.” Mark Gottlieb, executive director of the Public Health Advocacy Institute at Northeastern University School of Law in Massachusetts, stated, “Normally, if this was any other product, this would be the kind of consumer protection concern that the state attorney general would be investigating. But because it’s the state lottery, they’re exempt from just about all consumer protections that Illinois law would provide a consumer for any other industry. It’s important information for people who are spending billions of dollars a year on instant game tickets. The state of Illinois probably should be more responsible than your average for-profit business in the way it administers the lottery, and that does not seem to be the case.”
Each week the lottery publishes on its website a list of all the games currently on the market plus how many prizes remain unclaimed for each game. In November, the Tribune found only the $2 game Here Lies Buried Riches was still on the market without a top prize available; it had offered four top prizes of $20,000. It wasn’t pulled off the market until early January, when eight other games still were on sale without any unclaimed top prizes.
When the lottery issued its March 6 instant prize list, 10 of the 63 games on sale no longer had a top prize available. Tickets for most of the games without any top prizes were no longer being distributed, but retailers still could sell them to customers, according to Illinois Lottery policy. On March 20, a few days after Tribune investigators asked about the number of games without top prizes, the lottery issued an updated list showing two of those games had been removed from the market. However, on April 3, three more games were listed as having no grand prizes left and April 17, nine games had no top prizes.
Lottery spokesman Jason Schaumburg said, “Having the last top prize claimed does not automatically result in ending a game’s distribution or sales.” Lottery officials said according to procedures they “may” consider several factors for closing a game, including when all the top prizes are claimed. But the policy doesn’t state a specific time frame for removing games from the market, nor does it require games to be discontinued after all top prizes have been awarded.
It’s not the first time the lottery has been less than forthcoming. In 2016, former lottery managers Northstar, the first private company to be hired to operate a state lottery, advertised dramatically larger grand prizes and printed significantly more tickets than previously. Sales increased but not
not enough to sell out the massive numbers of tickets printed. Sales slowed and some games were pulled early, sometimes before all, or even any, life-changing grand prizes were awarded.
Illinois hired a new private manager, Camelot Illinois, which took over on January 2 and will fully operate the lottery on July 1. Meanwhile lottery officials said during the transition the policy on ending games will remain the same. Camelot officials said the company has had little input on when to end games.
But Camelot spokeswoman Wendy Abrams said, “We plan to be as transparent as possible in the way we communicate the status of games and prizes to our players. We plan to work with the lottery to improve the policies and procedures that guide how these games are marketed, activated and closed at retail locations so that our players are able to make informed decisions. Our transition and business planning processes have been our immediate focus and frankly, we haven’t yet had time to work with the Lottery to review and improve the policies and procedures that guide the sale of instant win games.”
