Oregon Lottery

wh Woah was that goldenия? What? today Oregon is news because government greed for more and more money has elevated gambling in this state to a high art and the state has become the bookie. Portland minister Frank Shields attacked the new Oregon lottery in his

sermon but an estimated 50 to 60 thousand Oregonians chose to play. Another Portlander Gary Verboot was the first big winner. He guessed right on all 14 NFL games and won more than $12,000. Across Oregon other winners were collecting their money at grocery and convenience stores. For most of them the prize was just over $7. According to lottery officials roughly one in four people who played the Oregon game came away a winner. We're very pleased with the turnout. We would like to see continual growth over the 20 weeks of football. We will have games up to and including the Super Bowl game. One week ago Oregon opened its news sports lottery with a pep rally in downtown Portland. Cheer leaders abandoned and a speech from the majority leader of the Oregon House of Representatives David Dicks urging the crowd to bet on

professional football. I want extended imitation for all of those Oregonians who once in a while have put a dollar into their local pool at the office or put a dollar into their local pool at their local tavern and participated in some kind of pool for football and Sunday. Come on down and play sports action and know that if you don't win even if you lose you win because the money is going to go to good programs that support our kids on these campuses. Oregon's lottery game is based on scores in the National Football League. Profits from sports action go to support athletics at Oregon colleges and universities. The athletic programs at both Oregon State University and the University of Oregon have long-standing deficits. There were predictions that with no new money Oregon State would be forced out of the pack 10 within two years. In November of 1988 after Oregon voters rejected a beer and cigarette tax that would have balanced the athletic budgets, representative Dicks and

others turned to the lottery. And they actually showed us a game that European countries use where they use results from soccer events, professional soccer, to fund their Olympic efforts. And so the natural was I said why don't we use NFL games and other games that I have put a dollar on illegally, whether it's at the local in my office or at work or at a local tavern. Okay, now do you know how to read that? This summer the Oregon legislature approved the idea and sports action was born. On Wednesday in your newspaper a program is going to come out in the sports section. The program lists the upcoming weeks NFL games and the point spreads as calculated by the state of Oregon's own professional odds maker. Are you familiar with point spreads? No, we're okay. Players bet one to five dollars or ten or twenty dollars on a minimum of four games are up to all 14 games in a week. So if you selected say four teams that won you're going to get about eight dollars if you played on a

dollar play. Now if you played a dollar and played four team games and you got lucky and all of them won then what you're going to come away with is about eight thousand dollars. The odds against picking four games correctly are sixteen to one. The odds against picking all 14 games right more than sixteen thousand to one. We'll go back to the drawing board. Point spreads are critical to the Oregon game. In theory the spread's credit extra points to an underdog before the game begins. Reducing all the NFL games to even bets. In theory the addition of point spreads makes sports action a game of chance. But before people can play they have to understand the spreads. And while lottery director Jim Davie explains point spreads often some people never get it. Point spreads are pretty simple. We have an expert that says this team is the favorite. This is the

underdog from what I can see to equalize the team. We need to give this team three points, four points before the game starts. And so you just have to add that into the final score. And so if you have the favorite team scores 20 points the underdog scores 18. You had a point spread of three. You had that pay 18 you get 21 so the underdog in the lottery won 21 to 20. Teaching people point spreads was one of the problems in starting the new game. Another bigger problem for Oregon was how to avoid potential lawsuits. The NFL's lawyers have served notice the league wants no part of sports action. And so all the advertising for the lottery game talks about professional football but never the national football league. In its programs the game even avoids using team names only the names of the cities where those teams play which means the Los Angeles Rams are listed as Anaheim and the New York Giants are in New Jersey. We looked at the team names and we

said this could be considered property of the National Football League so we've avoided that we use city names. It probably complicates the game a little but not much. One more complication for the lottery to deal with is mounting opposition at home while fans were watching Sunday's games in Portland. Methodist minister Frank Shields was railing against sports action. What a pioneering effort this is to have the state of Oregon fleecing the poor to run its operations to have the state of Oregon conning hopeless people into taking that desperate long shot instead of paying the rent. What a way for us to mark ourselves in the nation. What a way for us to be first a first in expediency is what I'd call it. State Representative Dix concedes the new lottery is controversial but he

denies it targets the poor. One of the things we looked at was who would buy these tickets and we found it was a different group of people than buying the lottery presently. They tend to be middle-income, upper-income folks. We found that in the market research that people that have the money to go to football games have the money to participate in booster clubs will buy this will play this game because they know the money's going to an circulation athletics. Still State Representative Mike Burton sees the game as a mistake and he predicts a review in Oregon's next legislative session. For politicians it's easier to go out and say let's create a new lottery game that is to go on argue that this is valuable enough to go ahead and put on our tax roles. We've taken programs that if they are indeed valuable enough and particularly looking at college athletics which is a debatable issue as to whether or not the state should be supporting those directly or whether they should be self- supporting or how important they are in the in the hierarchy of educational needs in our higher institutions and we said well we'll just we'll just put that over here and let people gamble on it. I'd like to see government just stay out

of gambling all together. But while some Oregonians have doubts at least four other states are waiting and watching. If sports action works in Oregon Massachusetts, Kentucky, Michigan and Illinois could all follow suit and in its first weekend Oregon better is paid in more than $200,000. I think it's gonna be very successful. Everybody that I've talked to couldn't wait to get down and get their tickets. It's just fun. You know you get a lot of fun out of it for a dollar in my opinion. We both like football and have I guess illegally gambled on it for more than one year and you know a tavern pools and that kind of thing and so I agree I mean I think it's great for Oregon. It's you know a chance for the schools to make some money you know that's the big part about it that I like because I like things for kids and if the kids can benefit why fight it as long as it's not something illegal you know or moral and I see nothing wrong with this because they got card rooms in the center they got lottery all over the states they got scratched tickets or

why not there's room for something else. Especially sports because I love sports. Welcome back to 1190KEX Sports Line. I'm Scott Lynn and we are talking with Jim Davy the Lottery Director for the State of Oregon and we are taking your calls tonight if you have Oregon Lottery officials are already looking beyond the football season. Yeah I was there's no why that's just a part of the football game. I myself I just don't think of fear to you know the best of all of these bones and all the other sports that they got. Well you it certainly can be assured that we're gonna look at those sports and I think those sports are worried about it but we would like nothing better than to make this a year round game. Our goal is to raise eight million dollars for any collegiate athletics so we're gonna be looking at all the ways we can do that. Raising that eight million means Oregon will have to target virtually all major sporting events in football basketball and baseball. Next year Oregon expects to be in the news again and it becomes the first state to sell bets on

the old star game and the World Series.