Rob Schmuts, Host:
In American history, it was not easy to legally gambling from casino bases to online poker and sports batting. All this was possible by state lottery. Scratch and One are a new GBH news podcast how a group of Massachusetts State Bureaucrats came out to defeat the mob in their game and created a $ 100 billion madness. Host Ian Cas now joins me to talk about it. Hi, Ian.
Ian Cos, Booline: It is great to come here.
Schmidz: So this show opens with you with a facility store near Boston where you live and talk to the lottery player.
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Kos: So what are you playing right now?
Unidentified person: I play $ 50 every day.
Kos: Have you won yet?
Unidentified person: Not yet. So far, I have spent only 300 rupees on the bucket. There is nothing.
Kos: What this guy is playing is the state’s new $ 50 scratch ticket. He points to the serial number on the top right corner to show that he is tracking. This is the ticket number seven for today.
Unidentified person: It is seventh.
Kos: The remaining six are already in the trash, six $ 50 tickets.
Oh, wow
Unidentified person: Unless I break.
Kos: So why do you keep playing?
Unknown person: I am dreaming that I get bigger so I can retire. I am 75 years old.
Kos: Yes.
Unidentified person: I don’t have money in retirement. It’s too late to stop now because I have already spent so much money – so maybe it is broken and broken.
COSS: This person is happy to talk about money. A twice, he opens his purse and shows me exactly how much he has left, how much he has spent. But he doesn’t want to say much about himself, including his name. I know that he lives near and he works as a mechanic, which fits with dark blue work pants and black t -shirts. He comes here at his lunch break, which is part of his daily routine.
Yes
Unidentified person: Tomorrow, I had 1,500. His count. Only 900 remaining, 600 is already out. If the wife finds out …
KOS: He looks at me and pulls his hands into his throat.
You are dead?
Unidentified person: Gone.
Schmidz: Wow, at the age of 75, no money in retirement, and last attempt to bank on the lottery – it’s very strict. You know, Ian, how did you get a summary while talking to a lottery players like this guy in this convenience store?
COSS: So it started for me when I reached these sales data for state lottery. So every state that runs the lottery, which is most of them, you know, report the tax data. And I reached these figures, and they – there was something very hard about them, which is an extraordinary state of Massachusetts, where I live. In most states, you know, perhaps an average adult spends a few hundred dollars every year on tickets. In Massachusetts, if you make an average of sales on an adult population, it is more than $ 1,000 per adult.
Schmidz: Wow.
COSS: And that number – I mean, one thing, it just felt high …
Schmidz: Okay.
Kos: … especially when you probably keep this element in some zero, many zero, on average. And it also felt strange. Like, why Massachusetts of all places? And in this way I started on this question, how did the state lottery started, and how do these things go?
Schmidz: Well, then let’s dig something else. Tell me a little more about the history of the Massachusetts lottery. How did it start? And how was it so successful and sold so much tickets?
COSS: Sure Massachusetts was one of the first generation of lottery states, as well as New Jersey, New York, New Hampshire. And if you see, all the states I am making are in the northeast.
Schmidz: Okay.
COSS: This is really a place where the lottery trend begins. It starts like this, you know, de -industrializing, heavy catholic, actually, describes, where new sources of tax were needed. And there was also a population that you know, relatively tolerant of gambling. And so you get a Massachusetts lottery.
It starts in 1973, and it is not successful outside the gate. They are doing – you know, at the moment, you know, the most common game was basically weekly drawing. And sales – you know, when it starts, there is a bit of excitement, but very quickly, the sale goes flat. And the lottery begins in search of ways to innovate.
And one of the first major innovations in the state, and what is really the tone of everything and then, is that Massachusetts becomes the first state to try a quick ticket, which we usually call scratch tickets, okay? And this is the place where lottery fats really begin to change. And scratch tickets, eventually, becomes the most successful and important game for all state lottery.
Schmidtz: Now, you went back and saw the history of the lottery. We talked about it for the Massachusetts State lottery, but also a crowd – was also involved in this business. Can you talk a little about it?
Kos: Yes. So in addition to raising money for the state, the second key rationality – and it was really important in creating these lottery – the crowd had to keep the business out of business. So if we go back to the 1960s, the 70s, when the lottery is starting, it is not that there is no lottery. There were only lottery in the lottery run by the mafia. So you were called numbers, especially in the northern and east coast -American cities – New York, Detroit, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Boston, and it was a huge, huge business for the crowd.
So the state – you know, in many ways, it is later like the drug policy, where it is so, okay, you know, the demand is strong. It doesn’t look like we can keep it completely out of business. We may be easily legalized and brought to the house, and hey, we can make some money from it when we are on it.
Schmidz: (Laughter) Why don’t we earn that money? So …
Kos: Yes.
Schmidz: … One point, you interviewed a notorious former crowd called Kevin Wax about the state lottery, and he puts it easily.
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Kevin Wax: This is the old story. You know, the government makes money. They join it. You know, we will only remove everyone from the business. That’s what they did. They are the largest group in the country.
Schmidz: The largest group in the country. It just came down to see how much money they could make?
KOS: I think, you know, when you see politics in these early lottery states, yes, the main driving force is income. It seems clear to me that things about keeping the crowd out of business were very important in terms of rhetoric, but the driving factor was really tax. This was the time where, you know, the states were really hurting for money, and at the same time there was a lot of resistance to raising taxes. The 70s – and this is probably more true than going to the 80s and 90s – no one wanted to raise tax. In fact, the first state to make a lottery was New Hampshire, which is a famous tax avoiding, okay? There …
Schmidz: Okay.
Kos: … There is no income tax in New Hampshire. And thus the lottery was seen as an alternative, another way to raise money, which was more popular at that time.
Schmidz: So Ian, you know, how does it all connect with the gambling we are seeing today – you know, casino bases, online poker? I feel like when I see football, for example, I – every other commercial sports bet is commercial. I mean …
Kos: Yes.
Schmidz: … It basically goes to this place.
KOS: Yes, this – the way I see it, the lottery really did a slow cultural work to normalize gambling and make everything we are seeing today. I think it’s easy to forget that if you go back in 1960, the state of Nevada was not in casino bases. No one was in casino bases in Atlantic City, okay? There was no state lottery here, and of course, it had no widespread legal sports conditions. So in a period of two generations, we have seen only a fundamental change in the gambling style of our country.
And if you think about the power to pick up the lottery and the thing that was the deputy – okay? – It was really in the shadow and margins of society and was putting the state stamp on it – okay? – Keeping it on a corner facility, keeping it on television – who did a lot – to bring gambling out and eliminate state hunger. You know, once they realized that it exists – gambling income is possible, then it was very logical for the states to start looking at gambling bases and then start watching sports batting, and in fact, what we’ve seen is flowing with the same logic.
Schmidz: Ian Kos hosts new GBH News Podcast Scratch and Win. You can find it wherever you get a podcast. Thanks, Ian.
Kos: Thanks.
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