By John Lyon
Arkansas News Bureau

LITTLE ROCK — Critics of Arkansas’ lottery have called for research to show who is playing the lottery — and Lottery Director Ernie Passailaigue says they’ll get it.

At a hearing earlier this month before a legislative oversight committee, representatives of several groups that opposed the lottery’s creation urged lawmakers to order demographic studies of the lottery’s players.

“I really encourage the Legislature to put aside resources to study who plays the lottery so we have a better sense of the economic impacts on families,” Rich Huddleston, executive director of Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families, said at the hearing.

That’s going to happen with or without a legislative mandate, according to Passailaigue.

“It is our goal to understand (who plays the lottery), not only for our own business purposes but it’s our goal also to be able to testify in front of legislative members or talk to civic groups about who’s playing. The only way to do that is to do some sort of demographic survey,” Passailaigue said in an interview with the Arkansas News Bureau.

Passailaigue said he’ll propose an operating budget early next year that will include a budget for research. If approved by the state Lottery Commission, the research contract will be awarded through a public bidding process, he said.

Passailaigue said he did not know how much the research would cost, but when he was lottery director for South Carolina that lottery spent about $50,000 a year on player surveys. The surveys initially were mandated by law, but after the mandate expired the lottery continued to commission them voluntarily.

“If you say a scholarship is worth $5,000 and you’re spending $50,000 … that’s 10 scholarships,” Passailaigue said. “But is there a benefit? I think you could make a case there is a decided benefit to being able to answer questions about who plays the lottery and the age group and the demographic group and sex and ethnic origin and the educational levels and all this other stuff.

“It also helps us understand internally who our players are. It’s a marketing thing for us as well.”

Passailaigue’s promise to commission demographic studies is “a positive step in the right direction,” Huddleston said Friday, but he said he hopes research also will be done to determine who receives lottery-funded scholarships.

“If low-income and minority groups are disproportionately playing the lottery, or bearing the burden of funding the lottery from our perspective, then they should also be getting their fair share of scholarships,” Huddleston said.

Passailaigue said the lottery has no control over who receives scholarships.

“I’m only going to be held accountable for what I have control over,” he said.

Huddleston also said he would like to see an independent analysis of how the lottery markets itself.

“The last thing the state needs to do is to target groups who economically are probably least able to play,” he said.

“We’re not targeting anybody,” Passailaigue said, adding that all of the lottery’s advertising buys are available for review by the Legislature, the press and the public.

Why does the lottery need market research, if it doesn’t target anybody?

“We’re in a market environment where people vote every day their dollars as to what they think is appropriate, in terms of their purchase, and what they don’t, so it’s helpful to us to find out basically who plays, what they like, what they don’t like,” Passailaigue said.

Jerry Cox, executive director of the Family Council, said Friday he is pleased to hear that demographic research is planned, but he hopes the research will show not just who the lottery’s players are but also how often they play.

“There is a big difference between the wealthy person … who plays the lottery three times a year and the poor person who goes in and uses their entire paycheck to buy lottery tickets,” Cox said.

Passailaigue said he expects the research to be conducted along the same lines as South Carolina’s studies, which looked at frequency of play.

Those studies showed that the demographics of South Carolina’s lottery players were similar to those of the state’s population, but low-income and minority groups were more likely than other groups to be frequent players.

Huddleston and Cox both said they would like to see legislation passed to require lottery studies. House Speaker Robbie Wills, D-Conway, has shown little interest in the idea.

“We are monitoring all aspects of this lottery. We don’t have to have a bill to require us to do that” Wills told reporters earlier this month.

Cox said some lawmakers have told him they are interested in imposing new requirements on the lottery, though he declined to identify any by name.

“After the hearing the other day at the Capitol I had several members of the Legislature come up to me and say, ‘Give me your list and we’ll get something drafted,’” he said.