For a Dollar and a Dream by Jonathan D. Cohen

Author:Jonathan D. Cohen
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2022-06-15T00:00:00+00:00

Advertising has always been crucial to the success of lotteries. More so than other forms of gambling, lotteries rely on mass participation, on as many tickets as possible being sold to large numbers of players. In the American colonial period, lotteries were advertised on handbills, on street posters, and in newspapers. Promotional materials detailed all pertinent information: jackpot size, ticket cost, locations to buy tickets, the date of the drawing, and who or what the lottery was raising money for. In some cities, lottery ads were even more ubiquitous than they are today. A New York City grand jury wrote in the early 1830s that “some of our principal streets are literally disfigured by [lottery] advertisements.” These were no mere informational inducements. In 1833, a Pennsylvania lawmaker described “hand-bills of the most insidious and seductive character” thrust into the hands of Philadelphia residents. “Powerfully appealing” images were used for “deceiving the credulous and alluring the unwary. A prize is always promised.”11

As states cracked down on lotteries in the nineteenth century, legal and political debates over sweepstakes gambling centered around the question of advertising. By the 1880s, the nation’s lone remaining sweepstakes was the Louisiana State Lottery Company, which was notorious for its reach into states that had barred gambling. With state governments helpless to stop the flood of promotions from Louisiana and from nascent illegal gambling operations, Washington took action. Congress passed a series of laws restricting the interstate transportation of lottery tickets as well as the distribution of gambling promotions through the mail. The lottery ticket restriction was upheld by the Supreme Court in Champion v. Ames (1903), a groundbreaking ruling that affirmed Congress’s ability to regulate interstate commerce.

Seven decades later, these laws presented a serious stumbling block for states seeking to publicize their newly established government-run lotteries. Newspapers were uncertain about what exactly constituted promotional material. Because of the restrictions on the interstate transmission of gambling information, papers could not send lottery news or advertisements to readers across state lines, meaning the New York Times would have to remove lottery ads in order to legally deliver to customers in Connecticut. Shortly after its founding in 1934, the Federal Communications Commissions (FCC) extended the ban on broadcasting lottery information, a policy that the agency decided in 1967 also applied to government-run games. Television and radio stations were prohibited from airing lottery drawings or even showing winning numbers, and ABC and NBC initially refrained from broadcasting any information about the lottery altogether, even in news reports.12 These restrictions severely hampered the games at a vulnerable point in their development. If early lottery winners were unable to attend drawings in person, they found out they had won only when they were contacted directly by lottery representatives or if they called a hotline set up by the lottery that read the winning numbers. Unsurprisingly, prizes frequently went unclaimed. In 1974, the New Jersey Lottery needed to seek special permission from the FCC to broadcast a limited number of radio spots to let residents know about unclaimed prizes.

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