The Wyoming Lottery has finally produced enough net proceeds to give a substantial amount of money back to the state.
As their website states, WyoLotto was officially created in 2013 after the governor’s signing of House Bill 77. Beginning without any appropriated state funds and selling the first tickets in 2014, the lottery has now generated net proceeds, which will be returned to the state.
“The lottery statute requires that net proceeds, the difference between revenue and cost of doing business, that difference, is returned to the state of Wyoming,” Dave Bonner, secretary of WyoLotto’s board of committee, said.
Bonner stated that according to the legislation who created the lottery, the beneficiaries of the first $6 million of annual proceeds are cities, towns and counties. Since January 2016 WyoLotto made quarterly deposits to the Treasurer’s office, which distributed the money throughout the state.
“In the first week of October, that’s this month, we transferred $862,000 to the state of Wyoming as quarterly proceeds,” Bonner said.
Since the WyoLotto was started independently with no state appropriated money it took a while for the organization to pay off all their loans and debts, but now that it’s paid off they can start giving back.
“Cities, towns and counties feel the constraints that every other agency of the government does in this environment of contracted revenues,” Bonner said. “So when revenues are down, every little bit helps.”
Not only is the lottery now giving back but Bonner states that another thing it does is hold dollars in Wyoming. With a lottery on the border of every surrounding state, people from Wyoming were often leaving to play in the game elsewhere.
“Now that there is a lottery we are keeping Wyoming dollars at home,” Bonner said.
As well as keeping the money at home, another important objective of the lottery was to provide entertainment. Bonner states that the people of Wyoming wanted the lottery for years and pushed legislature to approve one.
“It was created as an entrepreneurial entertainment enterprise,” Bonner said.
Following that entertainment base, the game does change from time to time to keep people active and interested and a new version of Mega Millions is set to be released at the end of October this year.
“The update of the Mega Millions play rules take effect this month,” Bonner said. “I think there are going to be more winners and it just freshens the game.”
While the game holds a high entertainment standpoint it also carries an important message to play responsibly, which Bonner says WyoLotto is very upfront about.
