The New Mexico State Lottery has turned 15 years old this year, and lottery officials have celebrated the event by launching a new advertising campaign and a new scratch lottery. Unfortunately, profits have gone down lately and there is even a possibility that the lottery will run out of scholarship funds in 2 or 3 years. Lotteries

“This is a new era for us because we don’t know how many people are going to play the lottery from now on,” Tim Jennings, President of the Senate and strong supporter of the lottery scholarship stated. “We have never been through this big of a recession since we started the lottery.”

One of the lottery’s biggest achievements so far is sending over 68,000 New Mexicans to college, knowing that most of them could not have finished their education otherwise. Unfortunately, even though the lottery promoted higher education, it has seen less and less players. Just last year, the lottery’s total revenue decreased by 5 percent.

Adriana Binns, The New Mexico State Lottery’s director of communications and marketing, said that the revenue decrease is due mainly to having less retailers and a weak overall economy. US lottery

“What we have to remember the lottery is raising more money than ever … even though sales aren’t quite where we would want them to be, we are still happy about that,” Adriana Binns stated.

Out of the total revenue received by the New Mexico State Lottery, 30% is used for scholarship funding, 50% is given back to the players under the form of prizes, and the remaining 20% is used for advertising, management costs and other expenses. The lottery has contributed more than $475 million to scholarships and education in general.

The Legislature has considered a series of measures to keep students in schools, including a tuition freeze and encouraging students to take a one year break from education. However, the measures fell short of the requirements, and they were joined by another one which would have allowed students a 16 month break after high school. As things are now, they need to register in the first semester following their graduation from high school. Lottery checker

“The universities, in my opinion, they quit raising fees. All they do is raise tuition because its paid for by the state. They have kind of gamed the state a little, in my opinion,” Tim Jennings added. “We might have to lower the amount we pay.”