Lottery Executive Director Mark William Bracken said the retreat from TV was due to the relatively limited advertising budget the Legislature provides the Lottery and because “the cost of advertising has increased” now that sports betting companies are going heavy on advertising to attract gamblers to their platforms. Treasurer Deborah Goldberg's calls for the Lottery to be allowed to sell its products online have not been embraced by the Legislature, with the House backing the move last session but Senate Democrats not agreeing to it.
BOSTON (SHNS) – You’ll be seeing less of the Massachusetts Lottery in some familiar places — like on television this holiday season or when the Boston Celtics honor local heroes — as deep-pocketed sports betting companies push the cost of traditional advertising avenues higher and higher, officials said Tuesday.
The Lottery has run a television ad as part of its holiday sales campaign for years, but this year could not afford the TV time. Lottery Executive Director Mark William Bracken said the retreat from TV was due to the relatively limited advertising budget the Legislature provides the Lottery and because “the cost of advertising has increased” now that sports betting companies are going heavy on advertising to attract gamblers to their platforms.
“The sports betting market has kind of just raised the bar and the amount of money that’s being spent. So it adversely affects all other advertisers, because the costs for products go up,” he said.
It’s not just advertising time that is getting more expensive, it is getting more and more pricey for organizations like the Lottery or other companies to have their name attached to certain initiatives.
The Lottery has been the “presenting sponsor” of the Boston Celtics’ annual “Heroes Among Us” awards since at least 2011, though the Lottery joined the team’s recognition of people who give back to the community during the 2003-2004 season, the News Service reported. But that partnership is no more, Bracken said.
“Boston Celtics close to tripled that sponsorship this year, and we could no longer afford it, because they know they can get a sports betting company to come in and pay triple what we were paying,” Bracken said. “So we’re being pushed out of the market in many, many ways.”
The Heroes Among Us program started in 1997, and honors individuals who have made lasting contributions to their community. At each home game, the team and its fans honor a recipient with an in-game presentation. The program has honored more than 1,000 people.
Lottery officials said in 2011, when the Lottery Commission backed a $121,000 contract with the Celtics’ business arm, that the partnership embodies the Lottery’s mission of giving back to Massachusetts communities. But it also came with branding benefits, promoting the Lottery’s products to an audience of about 18,600 fans at each home game and to the Celtics’ millions of web visitors.
Treasurer Deborah Goldberg, who oversees the Massachusetts Lottery, has long cautioned that the Mass. Lottery could be left behind — and therefore the amount of money it produces each year for the Legislature to use as local aid could be under threat — as Bay State residents who have shown a steady willingness to shell out their money for a chance to win big take advantage of other gaming options.
Goldberg’s calls for the Lottery to be allowed to sell its products online have not been embraced by the Legislature, with the House backing the move last session but Senate Democrats not agreeing to it.
She took office in 2015 just months before Massachusetts made its long-discussed expansion of gambling a reality. The state’s first (and only) slots parlor opened in June 2015, followed by resort-style casinos in August 2018 and June 2019. The state has also given the green light to daily fantasy sports contests and last year legalized sports betting. Despite all of that, the Lottery last budget year brought in more revenue than ever before, paid out more in prizes than any previous year, and expects to return a record profit of $1.194 billion.
Goldberg said Tuesday that “although our profit numbers are still looking very robust,” the rising price of advertisements and sponsorships because of the changing industry landscape shows that “these types of things do have a long-term impact.”
The Lottery’s strong sales performance held up in October. Bracken reported to the Lottery Commission on Tuesday that the month’s sales totaled $474.4 million, up by $34.4 million or 7.8 percent over October 2022. The Lottery turned a profit of $82.7 million in October, which was down from $90.8 million in October 2022, a drop that Bracken attributed to a higher number of prizes claimed last month.
The $474.4 million that was spent on the Lottery last month (and the $82.7 million in profit for the state) helps to round out the full picture of Bay State gambling activity.
The Mass. Gaming Commission reported that people here wagered more than $571.76 million on sporting events that took place in October, pumped another $794.1 million into slot machines and risked an untold amount on casino table games — all of which translated into about $39 million in tax revenue for the state in October.
In all, people in Massachusetts risked more than $1.84 billion (plus whatever uncounted amount was wagered on popular table games like blackjack) in October at casinos, on the Lottery and through sportsbooks. The state can expect to see about $121.7 million, or about 6.6 percent of what was put at stake, of that as gambling tax revenue (32 percent) or Lottery profits (68 percent).
https://www.wwlp.com/news/massachusetts/sports-betting-elbows-lottery-out-of-tv-ad-market/