CHASING SALES DURING CORONAVIRUS PANDEMIC

LAST WEEK, Jonathan Yono, the co-owner of Wild Willy’s Bar & Grill in Romulus, Michigan, was doing some paperwork when a representative from the Michigan Lottery phoned. The rep was calling to check if Yono, who normally sells lottery products, had received a new batch of tickets — and, if so, could activate them for play. Yono replied that he hadn’t, because his bar has been closed for weeks on state orders to prevent the spread of novel coronavirus. But he wouldn’t want to sell the tickets anyways.Get more news about 菲律宾彩票包网服务,you can vist loto98.com

Convenience store owners he knows — including his brother — have told Yono that lottery play is creating unnecessary person-to-person contact in their stores, which remain open. Michigan, like other states and countries, is “taking all these precautions, yet still advocating the sale of these games, and especially at such a hard time financially for people,” he said. “It’s just disappointing.”

In Michigan, retailers, trade representatives, at least one state lawmaker, and members of the public have complained in recent weeks that the lottery has become a public health concern; players, critics say, are congregating in stores, even if they don’t have other purchases to make. In early April, Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer said that while convenience stores count as “essential,” their lottery sales should not, and suggested she would look “very seriously” at restricting them. Last week, as the coronavirus death toll rose in her state, especially among its black residents, Whitmer issued an executive order restricting what goods can be sold, including flooring, furniture, plants, and paint. Lottery sales, however, have been allowed to continue.
In her recent comments, Whitmer noted that no other state, to her knowledge, had shut down their lottery either. She was right. Across the country, from Pennsylvania to California, state officials have argued that lotteries generate essential funding for public services — education, commonly, but also programs for seniors, municipal budgets, and general expenditure — that they can’t afford to forgo, especially right now. Michigan’s lottery provided the state with more than $1 billion in school funding last year — an amount, it said, that worked out to more than $700 per pupil. Yono points out that while Whitmer, unlike leaders in other states, has said that she doesn’t think the lottery is essential, “everything [she’s"> doing is pointing to the fact that it is.” (Whitmer’s office and the Michigan Lottery did not respond to requests for comment.)

The many critics of state lotteries find their continued operation perverse. They argue that even at the best of times, lotteries amount to a regressive tax on low-income people; that they aren’t always as lucrative for state coffers as they portray themselves as being; and that even if they were, the health of retailers, players, and lottery staff should trump all other considerations right now.

“I can’t believe that they haven’t suspended sales,” said Dawn Nettles, a players’ rights advocate who runs Lotto Report, a site for lottery enthusiasts, out of Texas. “Purchasing a lottery ticket — I don’t care how you wanna view it — is not an essential business. … It’s just sheer greed on the part of the government.”

Michigan’s lottery has advised members of the public not to go to the store just to gamble, and told retailers that they must stop selling lottery products unilaterally if they can’t sell them while maintaining social distancing guidelines. But Yono said retailers he knows have been reluctant to shut off their lottery games voluntarily, because they’re concerned that doing so would drive customers — who buy tickets, on which retailers make commission, as well as other goods while they’re in store — to shop elsewhere, possibly permanently. (The Michigan Lottery says an estimated 9 percent of lottery sales go back to retailers as commission, a higher figure than in many other states.)
In normal times, retailers in most states are contractually obliged to meet minimum sales quotas. The Michigan Lottery isn’t enforcing those at the moment. The Intercept asked all 45 state lotteries in the U.S. whether they, too, are permitting their retailers to stop sales without repercussions and whether they’re doing anything else to protect stakeholders from the virus. (Only Alabama, Nevada, Utah, Alaska, and Hawaii don’t have a lottery). The lotteries in Vermont, Minnesota, and Washington are not enforcing minimums right now. The New York Lottery said it doesn’t enforce such quotas anyway and that it has shuttered 16,000 video lottery machines to comply with state guidelines (though other lottery products remain available). The California Lottery, which also said it doesn’t enforce strict quotas, said that it has suspended all paid advertising for the time being, “in hopes that consumers will not leave their homes for the sole purpose of buying Lottery tickets.”

Eight states referred The Intercept to the North American Association of State and Provincial Lotteries, an umbrella body that represents lotteries in the U.S. and Canada. Bishop Woosley, NASPL’s president, said in an email that in addition to funding public services, keeping lotteries running is a financial lifeline for retailers at a difficult time. He says that public health is the “number one” priority for member lotteries right now, that NASPL is working with retailers to encourage social distancing measures, and that he is “not aware” of any state punishing retailers “as a result of low or lost sales during this pandemic.”

Critics, however, say steps short of a complete shutdown are inadequate. “You’ve got people who have invested 20 years and longer on a set of numbers, and they are certain to have that number every draw,” Nettles, who herself plays a regular set of numbers, said. “They’re afraid not to go buy their numbers. And the lotteries know it, and they’re taking advantage of the people.”