The Hoosier Lottery expects to deliver about $341 million to the state this year — the lowest amount in the last five years.
Lottery revenue helps teacher, police and firefighter pensions and reduces the cost of license plates at the BMV.
Revenue for the fiscal year that just ended in June is down about 6 percent from the previous year. But Lottery Executive Director Sarah Taylor said it’s also in line with where the lottery expected to be.
She said it’s not time to panic.
“We’re still pretty optimistic that the big jackpots can maybe deliver some special wins this year to us and we’ve also got some good product to put out,” Taylor said.
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Sales of draw games — Hoosier Lotto, Powerball and Mega Millions — were down 38 percent. That’s in large part because the two multistate games had only one really big jackpot between them last fiscal year.
Taylor said something like that is out of the Hoosier Lottery’s control — so what it does is focus on what it can control: scratch-off games.
“The number of scratch-offs, the launch of the scratch-offs, the style of the scratch-offs — and that has what has sustained us,” Taylor said.
Taylor said the lottery will also continue to add self-service machines around the state and continue discussing online lottery with the legislature.
Brandon is our Statehouse bureau chief. Contact him at bsmith@ipbs.org or follow him on Twitter at @brandonjsmith5.
