WA lottery 'Raffle'

The Washington State Lottery just introduced a new 'Raffle' game called "Hometown Heroes", the proceeds of which will benefit the WA State Veterans Innovations Program. (Support to families of veterans)

Here are the parameters:
300,000 tickets are available at $10 each
24 winners get $50,000
240 winners get $250
3000 winners get $50
Total prize pool: $1,410,000 for a payout ratio of a whopping 47% if all tickets are sold.

How many tickets do you think they will sell? Last fall's Raffle game was also $10 and it sold about 85% of the available tickets, which the lottery considered a success (see meeting minutes on page 2 here: http://www.walottery.com/docs/agendas/MinutesJan11.pdf

The lottery posts the number of tickets sold on it's website (presumably to advertise the 'scarcity' of tickets remaining)
http://www.walottery.com/heroes/index.html

Wow I just read thru the minutes. They essentially said that they thought that last fall's Raffle didn't sell as well as they had hoped becuase people didn't know about it and maybe they should have bought more TV time.

Perhaps people DID know about it and saw what a cruddy proposition it was!

There was even a proposal to incentive retailer $1 for each ticket sold! It's not like retailers say "Would you like a Raffle ticket with your bag of chips?"

its basiclly donating to charity/good cause....but not getting the tax write off....but having a chance to win money..

The Kentucky Lottery recently offered a "Split the Pot" raffle. Players bought a $10 ticket, and one winner would get 50% of the total sold.

The first winner won $145,430, which means 29,086 tickets were sold. There were apparently no upper nor lower limits to the number of tickets to be sold (though that might be incorrect, I'd have to research); Just a period of time to buy tickets.

Straight up 50% House Edge.

Quote: Dween

The Kentucky Lottery recently offered a "Split the Pot" raffle. Players bought a $10 ticket, and one winner would get 50% of the total sold.

The first winner won $145,430, which means 29,086 tickets were sold. There were apparently no upper nor lower limits to the number of tickets to be sold (though that might be incorrect, I'd have to research); Just a period of time to buy tickets.

Straight up 50% House Edge.

Who paid the expenses? Often these raffles will pay the expenses from the pot, then split the remainder 50% winner and 50% charity/state. If that's the case, the house edge is greater than 50%!

From the Kentucky Lottery website:
After 50% of sales are awarded as the game’s prize, and expenses of administering the game and retailer commissions are deducted (approximately 9%), remaining funds will go toward college scholarships, grants and other higher education funding paid for by Lottery proceeds.

So the expenses are paid AFTER the player gets the 50% cut.

Quote: Dween

The Kentucky Lottery recently offered a "Split the Pot" raffle. Players bought a $10 ticket, and one winner would get 50% of the total sold.

The first winner won $145,430, which means 29,086 tickets were sold. There were apparently no upper nor lower limits to the number of tickets to be sold (though that might be incorrect, I'd have to research); Just a period of time to buy tickets.

Straight up 50% House Edge.

That's like a massive 50/50 draw, which is typical fund raiser at sporting events, it seems. 50% to the fund raiders, 50% to the winner. The charity o organization provides ticket sellers.

The Red Cross in Mexico attempted something similar once for a few years.

Traditionally they hold an annual donation drive which consists in thousands of volunteers colelcting money on the street. I always give them some. Then one year they started selling tickets to raffle off a number of gold and silver coins. Next year they issued scratch-off tickets, which were sold just about everywhere. Aside from the gold and silver coins, there were a number of other prices in specie, like pocket knives, soccer balls, watches, pens and so on.

That was a misserable failure for two reasons. 1) the prizes were very low quality junk and 2) you could only collect them were you bought the ticket. I heard they wound up with a lot of uncollected low quality junk... Oh, the coins were colelcted at the Red Cross offices.

The persisted with the scratchers for a few years, now offering cash prizes instead (smart move), and the tickets could be exchanged at any stand that sold them. Again the major prizes to be colelcted at their offices. But by then they had to compete with similar lotteries from state agencies and, eventually, private business. I think they dropped the idea about five years ago. now they just hunt for donations on the streets.

Some schools have raffles as wel. The one successful one, which goes on year after year is the popularly known Sorteo Tec, held by the Instituto Tecnologico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey (I'll let Paco and the Wizard try to translate it as homework <g>), which happens to be my old school BTW. The big prizes are impressive. Typically the first prize is a furnished house in Monterrey (in Mexico, not California) with two new cars in the garage and about US $75,000 in savings bonds issued by the Mexican government. Second prize is an apaprtment and one car and some money. Third prize is a voucher worth about 3/4 the price of a condo in Acapulco. The next 20 prizes or so are cars of decreasing price. Thent here a re a plethora of smaller prizes like TVs, DVDs, computers, scholsarhips, and so on.

But then the price of the tickets is also impressive. Last I checked it was, I think, 750 pesos, or around US $70 at the rate of exchange back then.

This school, BTW, has several branches all over the country. The founding campus in Monterrey and the bigger ones, like Mex City's and Guadalajara's, each use to run its own raffle. Now it's all centralized and the money, I'm told, is pro-rated to the branches by size.

I've bought eactly oen ticket, issued at the time by the Mexico State campus (where I studied highschool), and only because students were forced to try to sell tickets. Long story, but I had to buy one of the five given me in roder to return the unsold ones, or waste more time trying to return them all. i won nothing.

A classmate, though, in that very drawing, did get his parents to buy all 5 tickets. They won a pickup truck, which they sold about the next day.

Quote: slyther

Perhaps people DID know about it and saw what a cruddy proposition it was!

I don't understand why you say that.

Isn't a nearly 50% house edge typical for state run lotteries?

The only thing "cruddy" I saw was the relatively long odds of winning anything.

Quote: Nareed

Then one year they started selling tickets to raffle off a number of gold and silver coins. Next year they issued scratch-off tickets, which were sold just about everywhere. Aside from the gold and silver coins, there were a number of other prices in specie

Possibly less of a hassle than it might at first appear in a country where, in terms of publicly visible signage, the phrase "Compra Oro" is second in popularity only to "Muy Rico Menudo Hoy".

Quote: heather

Possibly less of a hassle than it might at first appear in a country where, in terms of publicly visible signage, the phrase "Compra Oro" is second in popularity only to "Muy Rico Menudo Hoy".

There's a coin called "Centenario" made of gold. It's not what you'd call in circulation, but they're easy enough to buy and sell. Any bank will get you as many as you can pay for, though most would take a few days to do so. You can get them from some coin dealers, too, and from any gold buyer/seller. Banks and gold merchants will also take them readily and exchange them for cash. In addition there are other gold coins and some silver coins like that, though they're less well known.

The gold coins offered in the Red Cross drawing were Centenarios.

The coin itself is rather nice. On one side I think it has the national emblem all other coins have. but on the obverse it has a rendering of the Independence Column. It's a tall column with a gilded female angel on top, located in Reforma avenue. I'm not much for Mexican ideals on monuments (the monument to the revolution is uniquely ugly), but the Angel is very well done. Very Classical Greek in quality, like the Fuente de Diana (a fountain with the goddess Diana holding a drawn bow, aslo located in reforma).

Quote: DJTeddyBear

Isn't a nearly 50% house edge typical for state run lotteries?

The only thing "cruddy" I saw was the relatively long odds of winning anything.

That's what I was getting at, the odds for the WA Lottery games are always horrible, especially compared to the Tribal Gaming we have all over the place. I guess I was just finding it amusing that they think the lack of sales was due merely to lack of advertising. BUt then again I suppose you could argue (and there are probably studies to back it up) that those who play the state lottery don't pay attention to odds.