DALLAS -- Tough economic times often improve lottery sales. However, as the economic situation across the United States continue to tighten in 2008, lottery ticket sales reportedly dropped by $215 million between July and September, according to lottery-industry magazine La Fleur's. The result is a slowing of yet another convenience-store traffic-driver.
Janak Patel, a partner at ABC Beer and Wine near Love Field, Texas, told the Dallas Morning News he's seen a 40% drop in lottery sales in the last year. Worse still, people who used to buy $20 tickets can now afford just the $1 or $2 [image-nocss] tickets.
"They were the ones we counted on," Patel said. "And now they're saying, I only have $10, and I need $6 for my lunch, so what's left?"
The decrease is reflected in reports from across the country.
The Texas Lottery, hard hit by the struggling economy and a brutal hurricane season, has seen ticket revenue drop by more than $45 million since last fiscal year, a 4% decline, according to the Dallas Morning News.
That newspaper also reports that California's sales are down nearly 10%.
Through mid-December, the first half of the fiscal year, lottery sales at the New Hampshire Lottery Commission were $108.5 million, down about $12 million, or 10.75%, from the same period last year, according to a report in the Nashua Telegraph.
In Colorado, sales since July have dropped almost $5 million, or 2.3%, compared with the same period last year. The decline has hit even the usually resilient scratch-off games, a lottery official told the Wall Street Journal, and at the current pace, the state's lottery will sell 5% fewer tickets this fiscal year than last year-a $25 million drop-off.
"The last couple of weeks, [I'm] not selling half as many lottery tickets ... partly because people aren't buying in general, getting people down in the store, but for the most part people who usually buy lottery tickets aren't anymore," c-store attendant Ben Grieger told KBJR-TV in Duluth, Minn.
Leticia V asquez, spokeswoman with the Texas Lottery Commission, said the late summer hurricane season wiped out lucrative sales across Houston and Galveston, a region that accounts for 25% of Texas lottery retailers.
"A lot of retailers were in areas where they couldn't get back up quickly," she told the Dallas Morning News. "When they were out of business, that was a significant loss in sales."
And an in-house study conducted between June and September-just before the markets tanked-found high fuel and food prices were also affecting lottery playing habits. Nearly 10% of people surveyed who had played in the past month had stopped because more of their money was going to gas and food. And 27% of people surveyed who had played in the past year said they were spending at least 80% less on lottery games because of these heightened costs.
"So yes, it wasn't just Hurricane Ike that had an effect on our sales," V asquez said.
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