BC - Integrity of lottery system at stakeexpert says
Gambling critic calls for survey of ticket sellers to discover buying habits
Chad Skelton, Vancouver Sun, Thursday, December 14, 2006
If lottery retailers in B.C. really are winning more prizes because they buy more tickets, the B.C. Lottery Corp. should find out how often retailers play, a leading gambling expert said Wednesday.
“They should be able to prove it,” said Garry Smith, a gambling expert at the University of Alberta. “The integrity of the whole system is at stake.”
On Wednesday, The Vancouver Sun reported that, over the past six years, lottery retailers have won major prizes at several times the rate of the general public.
The records, obtained through a Freedom of Information request, show that 4.4 per cent of all prizes over $10,000 have gone to those who sell tickets.
The figures have raised fears that lottery retailers may be stealing customers’ winning tickets — something that BCLC itself has documented at least four times over the past two years.
When a customer presents a paper ticket, like Lotto 6/49, to a retailer for validation, a bar code on the ticket is scanned by the machine. The display screen by the terminal tells you if your ticket is a winner or not and if it is a winner, it plays a tune and tells you how much you’ve won.
For scratch and win tickets, retailers also have to punch in a three-digit validation code that, until the ticket is scratched, is hidden by latex.
BCLC says it has confidence in its lottery system and believes the high rate of wins is due to retailers playing more often.
However, it admits it has no data on how often retailers play and says it has no immediate plans to find out.
“Until we come up with a way [to determine retailer play] that we think is fairly sound, we’re reluctant to commit to that,” said BCLC’s Paul Smith.
Garry Smith said it shouldn’t be that hard for BCLC to determine how often retailers play.
“You just do a survey,” he said. “It would take a while, but it shouldn’t be that hard.”
Indeed, BCLC already conducts extensive polling throughout the year to determine how often people in B.C. gamble, what they gamble on and how much they spend.
The survey breaks down data by gender, age, education level and region.
However, Paul Smith said BCLC doesn’t think a similar survey of retailers would be that effective because those surveyed often underestimate how often they gamble.
There are 4,336 lottery terminals in B.C. The exact number of people staffing those machines is unknown.
On Tuesday, Paul Smith said it would be fair to say four or five people work each terminal — which works out to about 21,000 retailers, or 0.7 per cent of the adult population.
That would mean retailers are winning prizes at roughly six times the rate of the public.
However, on Wednesday, Paul Smith said after further discussions with the lottery division he thinks the number is closer to 10 — which works out to 43,000 retailers, although he said that figure is an “educated guess”.
The larger figure would mean retailers are winning big prizes at three times the normal rate.
Following concerns about retailer wins in Ontario, that province’s gaming corporation hired a polling firm to study how often retailers gamble. It found they spent 1.9 times as much on lotteries as the average person — $23.30 a month compared to $12.30 — and tended to play games with better odds.
B.C. Solicitor-General John Les, who is responsible for gambling, said Wednesday he’s confident BCLC has sufficient safeguards in place to prevent retailer fraud.
cskelton@png.canwest.com
© The Vancouver Sun 2006
© 2006 CanWest Interactive, a division of CanWest MediaWorks Publications Inc.
