I don't feel pity for states that decide to use computerized drawings when their revenues take a plunge. I wouldn't feel that I had a fair shot regardless of the odds if the game has computerized drawings.

Very glad you posted this story. For the Hoosier Lottery to blame the 17% drop on the economy is not a valid argument considering the average lottery drop is only 3%. That clearly should tell Indiana they need to quit scamming their players with a rigged lottery. Its not just the lottery either. When the scratcher odds are 1:4 and people are buying 10 and 20 tickets in a row and not winning, something is wrong.

Somebody needs to wake the Indiana lottery commission up

i agree.. NO MORE COMPUTER DRAWS....

ping pong balls only..

Hooiser lottery if you read this get into the act...

Isn't it ironic that states that go computerized always say it's more "cost effective."

yeah cost effective for not having to pay someone, but look at the downside.. players hate computerized and the revenue goes down down down... i hope ncel never goes to computerized drawings.... i would never win

They wont listen. They are saving $80,000 a year by doing RNG but will accept a $40 million loss in revenue and blame it on the economy to keep the fraudulent RNG because they get to keep more money for themselves.

And they have had so many powerball winners.  Many more than Wisconsin.

Don't then get anything????

I know that the states collect taxes...

MarkP

Stick to real ball drawings to gain back people's trust. Also give out more prizes, to gain sales. It takes money to make money, for lottery, litterally.

I wonder what TN's will be?  I know they have lost a lot of players.

Hoosier Lottery should take a clue from the Georgia Lottery which has televised live ball drop draws every draw.  When players see actual drawings they have greater confidence in game integrity therefore spend more.

Lotteries are one of those entities where you have to spend money on live ball draws to demonstrate complete transparency and honesty.

Clear argument for people believing what they see, distrusting what they can not.

They need to go down hill,because,i have been play 111 for six years and it has never hit,the last time it hit was march of 2003,thats pretty bad and the odds are nt right,they also have a lot of repeat number,396 fell three times in just one month,they need to go back to the live balls ,or they are going to lose more players vjohnson8

I AGREE THE SCHATCH OFF TICKETS ARE A JOKE,YOU SPEND A DOLLAR,THEY WONT GIVE YOU ANYTHING BACK ,GREED STATE,VERY SELFISH   VJOHNSON8

Imagine that,yes Tennessee will finally either drop off the map,or get another CEO to run it.Until then (AS SHE QUOTED I DONT MAKE YOU PLAY)  Until then....That's funny.

It's been a while since I've had anything to do with the Hoosier Lottery, but if I remember correctly, they switched to an electronic drawing format for all their games sometime in 2001. According to their CPA/ Internal Auditor, a man named Joe Pfister, their first RNG was downloaded from a now-defunct web site called Lottery.com. That simple code was then uploaded to two 486 desktops (is anyone here old enough to remember those?) which served as our "official draw machines" for the next two years. One of them was housed, stored and used at the offices of Scientific Games near the Indianapolis airport, and the other was installed at Hoosier Lottery Headquarters downtown.

"Mister Pfister" told LosingJeff and I that switching to an RNG was actually William Foreman's idea (yes - THAT William Foreman, of the scratch-off ticket scandal), and that the Hoosier Lottery saved $80,000 per year with the new technology. According to their 2001 annual report, however, they LOST $100 MILLION in sales AND revenue during the first year of its operation. In 2002, they began earnestly promoting their "But We Have Integrity" campaign, and ran television commercials and full-page ads in newspapers all over the state assuring players that the RNG was a more secure method of drawing their numbers. We were unable to ascertain exactly how much they had spent running these ads, but we were pretty sure the cost would have exceeded $80,000.

Every year since, they've reported a decline in revenue, but somehow managed to boast of record sales in the same breath. I never could figure out how that works, exactly, but they have their own way of doing math down there. $2 + $2, for example, = $2, because two of those dollars aren't really there, see? Well, they WERE there, but those two dollars go to the state, so you can't really count them as part of our revenue. Yes, we sold a LOT of tickets, but the tickets we sold carried a smaller-than-average profit margin, and that was eaten up in printing costs, which is probably what happened to the two dollars of revenue you're currently trying to find. Yes, it's true that our sales totaled $800 million this year, but you're losing sight of the big picture; by using the RNG and not airing live drawings as state laws require, we SAVED $80,000, and that's called "fiscal responsibility!"

LosingJeff and I heard this type of "logic" used over and over again during the course of our four-year investigation of the Hoosier Lottery. Three different law firms told us that the 1600 pages of verifiable evidence we had collected "was probably sufficient to convict on at least three federal RICO predicates (Wire Fraud, Conspiracy to Commit Wire Fraud and Misappropriation/ Conversion of Public Funds). None would have anything to do with filing suits or charges, though, because, they said, "The state house can make it very difficult for us to make a living." When we took our evidence to the FBI in Indianapolis, we were escorted from the building and warned not to come back under threat of arrest (I know - but it's true), and a state police car followed us out of town.

If you want to see for yourself what they're doing and how they're doing it, just check their Daily Game payouts on the Hoosier Lottery web site. You'll see a LOT of zeroes, especially in the Daily-3 and Daily-4 games. Then, compare those payouts with those of ANY other state with lesser populations than Indiana, such as Delaware or South Carolina, who often pay out hundreds of thousands of dollars to winners of identical games. On a slow day, winners in those states claim mere tens of thousands in prize money, but their lotteries' payouts are NEVER "zero," as the Hoosier Lottery most often reports. The ONLY way they can pull this off with demonstrated consistency is to continually draw the number with the LEAST amount of play. The Hoosier Lottery is the ONLY lottery in the country without mandated liability limits, and they're also the ONLY lottery in the country which actively tracks player selections and bet amounts AS THE TICKETS ARE BEING SOLD. What's most disturbing is the fact that the Hoosier Lottery is exempt from state accounting or auditing procedures, so they've never been audited by the state in their entire history of operation.

Maybe their crooked practices are finally catching up to them.