The Arkansas Scholarship Lottery is celebrating record breaking sales and revenue for fiscal 2018, that ended June 30.
Sales reached $499,704,976 and revenue rose to $500,490,212.
The record-breaking sales and revenues translates to additional money for scholarships. The proceeds to scholarships were about $92 million, which is the third highest amount since 2012 when proceeds reached $97 million.
“Our mission is to maximize proceeds to scholarships in a responsible way,” ASL Director Bishop Woosley said in a news release. “With outstanding sales and revenues, we are doing just that. We have provided more than $781 million for the Academic Challenge Scholarship program, which equates to more than 275,000 scholarships. And that number will exceed 300,000 next month when the Arkansas Department of Higher Education awards scholarships to Arkansas students for the 2018-2019 school year.”
Another record that was made was the instant lottery sales which hit $407,604,791 along with Arkansas draw game sales which had the second highest sales ever at $92,103,185.
“In 2016 draw a game sales were more than $95 million,” Woosley said. “That was the year that the powerball went over $1 billion.”
The Arkansas Lottery also paid out the highest amount of prizes every to players this year — nearly $342 million, which is near $27 million more than the second highest amount paid to players in 2012. Retailer commissions of more than $28 million were record-breaking as well this year.
“Our excellent sales staff worked extremely hard this year,” he said. “Our gaming division introduced several new recording-breaking instant tickets, and our marketing group introduced a new advertising theme which featured real winners. I think all those efforts influenced our sales. I’m proud of the entire staff.
Read the entire financial report presented to the Arkansas Legislative Council Lottery Oversight Subcommittee here »