Stop Predatory Gambling

Profiting by pushing their fans into deeper debt

by spgadmin

Officials from the four major professional sports franchises in the Boston area – the Red Sox, the Patriots, the Celtics and the Bruins – gathered together yesterday to heap praise on their business partnership with the State Lottery to sell sports-themed scratch tickets.

Lotteries like Massachusetts make 70% of their profits from only 10% of the people who buy tickets – many of whom are addicted and heavily-indebted. Because lotteries overtime sap most of the money from this lucrative 10%, they must constantly be hunting for new prospects to replace them. Sports-themed scratch tickets are one method lotteries use to bring in new players. For every ten new people who buy scratch tickets, lotteries only need one of them to emerge as a hardcore user to sustain their predatory business model.

These sports teams and others like them across the United States are exploiting the enthusiasm and loyalty of their fan base. For lotteries and sports teams to profit from lottery scratch tickets, people need to lose a lot of money. So how do you market scratch tickets in such a way that users do not feel like losers?

 “It’s always been and always will be about associating with winners,” said the state official who oversees the Lottery.“Winning brands.”

There you have it. Instead of helping average citizens become real winners in our society, the government program of predatory gambling deceptively makes citizens feel like a winner while it encourages them to lose lots of money on virtually worthless lottery tickets.

In these economic times why won’t our government and our sports teams encourage people to save their money to help them become more financially secure?