"To date, we have given over $5 billion to education in North Carolina, that’s a number of which we are very proud,” NCEL Executive Director Alice Garland, said during a visit to the Randolph Rotary Club Wednesday. The NCEL has grown from $229.5 million in fiscal year 2006 to a $2.5 billion business today.
ASHEBORO — More than $8.4 million in N.C. Education Lottery (NCEL) funds for education benefitted Randolph County in fiscal year 2017.
Over the past 11 years, $69.6 million in lottery funds have been distributed within Randolph County, including $14.9 million toward debt service for the construction of Providence Grove High School and $3.7 million toward debt service for renovations at Guy B. Teachey Elementary.
“To date, we have given over $5 billion to education in North Carolina, that’s a number of which we are very proud,” NCEL Executive Director Alice Garland, who is set to retire on March 31, said during a visit to the Randolph Rotary Club Wednesday.
The NCEL has grown from $229.5 million in fiscal year 2006 to a $2.5 billion business today.
Garland, who attended as a guest of N.C. Rep. Pat Hurley (R-Randolph), was integral to the establishment and growth of the state’s lottery system, having been hired as the lottery’s fifth employee in 2005. She was named executive director in January 2011.
Hurley, who serves as a member of the Joint Legislative Oversight Committee on the lottery as well as on a panel for stakeholders for the lottery, set up the program for Rotary members to hear updates and learn how the lottery has helped education.
“Of course, they know I want it to help more, with more money going to education,” Hurley said as she introduced Garland.
One of Garland’s first presentation items was to address the question of who plays the lottery. She used nationally sourced demographic data, stating that state-level data is not yet available.
Based on a 2016 Gallup poll, about 40 percent of respondents who made less than $36,000 annually played the lottery. For those with annual salaries of $36,000-$90,000, 56 percent reported playing the lottery. For respondents with an annual income of more than $90,000, the percentage that played the lottery was reported as 53 percent.
Those with some college or a technical degree (53 percent) and those with college degrees (53 percent) were more likely to play the lottery than those with a high school education or less (47 percent), as well as those with post-graduate education (45 percent).
“This feels right to us based on winners that come in,” Garland said. “We don’t have a sense that it is predominantly low-income people, but again, we are going to do some North Carolina research.”
In December 2017, NCEL received its level 4 (top) International Certification for Responsible Gaming. It is only the fourth as well as youngest U.S. lottery to achieve the certification, having only been in operation since 2006.
“I frequently say that I want a lot of people playing a little; I don’t want a few people playing a lot,” Garland said. “We care about our players and we’d rather take care of our players than make sales that we really don’t need to be profitable.”
For fiscal year 2018, 64 percent of the NCEL budget is projected to be used to pay winners. Twenty-five percent, or greater than $600 million, is projected to be used for educational programs. Retail commissions are projected to account for 7 percent and administrative costs were budgeted at 4 percent.
“Ninety-five percent of what we bring in goes back into the economy in some way,” Garland said.
During a question-and-answer period, a member asked who runs the lottery in this state, having heard that it was a company in Florida. Garland explained that the lottery is run by lottery staff in North Carolina; however, every lottery is required to contract with a third-party gaming system vendor and instant ticket printing and warehousing vendor. There are only three of each type of vendor in the U.S.
NCEL currently contracts with International Game Technology (IGT), based in Providence, R.I., as its gaming system vendor responsible for gaming software. For instant tickets, NCEL is under contract with Scientific Games, headquartered in Las Vegas, N.V., with printing facilities in Alpharetta, Ga.
Garland also addressed marketing, which under current legislation is capped at 1 percent of sales under administrative costs. Mullen, an advertising agency in Winston-Salem, currently has the market contract.
“There are a lot of restrictions in our statutes about what we cannot say in an ad, and so we’re typically trying to go for humor,” Garland said.
Ads cannot ask the public to buy a ticket, appeal to a particular demographic, appeal to children or make any promises regarding winning, wealth or that the lottery will change one’s life.
In response to whether a similar situation as occurred in South Carolina on Christmas Day — in which all tickets in the same game purchased until the game was shut down were winning tickets — could happen here, Garland said the situation was still under investigation.
“Until we know what happened, I can’t tell you whether it will happen here,” she said. “What I can tell you is that North Carolina has a reputation for doing significantly more testing of our software than almost every other state. So, if this was a software glitch, as opposed to human error, then it’s very likely that we would catch that before it ever went to market.”
http://www.courier-tribune.com/news/20180104/lottery-head-shares-data-on-gaming