Hoping to boost sagging sales, the Ohio Lottery has doubled the daily drawings of games played
most heavily in black neighborhoods, some of them the poorest in Cleveland.

Lottery oficials say they were not targeting blacks or the poor when they added second daily drawings to the Pick 3 and Pick 4 numbers games in mid-August. Neither the lottery’s marketing plans nor its distribution of sales outlets suggests that such a strategy was used, and Ohio Lottery Director Mitchell Brown says changes in other games are under consideration as well.

But community leaders, lottery agents and even bettors themselves say they are troubled by the addition of the midday drawings, which took place despite a national gambling commission’s recommendation against the expansion of these or any other lottery games. “It’s too much,” said Sal Has- San, manager of the ML King SavMor, a neighborhood grocery that sold almost $2,000 a day in Pick 3 and Pick 4 tickets in 1998. “It’s just taking people’s money away.”

Although tickets are as cheap as 50 cents, many residents spend several dollars at both midday and evening drawings.

“I don’t appreciate the expanded opportunity for people to throw money away rather than saving or reinvesting in families,” said Cleveland City Councilman Joe Cimperman. His ward includes a portion of one of the heaviest betting areas in the state.

Adding the midday draw was purely. a business decision in which the race or income of potential bettors played no part, Brown said.

“The mission is to increase profits for the lottery profits education fund,” Brown said. “It’s a good mission. I’m not going to get into the social, moral, public policy question. It’ s not what I’m supposed to do. . . . I’m charged with running an effective and efficient lottery.”

That business decision is having its desired effect. Pick 3 and Pick 4 sales increased 13 percent
during the first month after the addition of the second drawing.

“It’s hard not to play twice a day,” said Khalid Bari, who was among a stream of bettors placing wagers recently at the ML King Sav-Mor.

Like many Cleveland bettors, Bari, 55, learned about playing “numbers” through the illegal games popular in the Cleveland neighborhood where he grew up.  Those games, in which winning numbers were picked from stock tables or a random selection of numbered balls, flourished for at least half a century before the lottery began in 1974.  They were known as "numbers” games, a term the Ohio Lottery still uses to describe its Pick 3 and Pick 4 games.

Law enforcement officials believe this long familiarity with illegal numbers games in Cleveland neighborhood explains why they account for a disproportionate share of the statewide wagering on the legal games.

A Plain Dealer analysis of Ohio Lottery sales, based on ZIP codes, shows that nine of the top 10 areas for Pick 3 and Pick 4 sales in Ohio last year were in Cleveland's southern and eastern neighborhoods and adjoining suburbs.  Total sales of the numbers games in those nine ZIP codes ranged from $ 5.5 million to $ 11 million in 1998.

The analysis also showed that, for Pick 3 and Pick 4:

About 29 percent of all last years wagers were placed in Cuyahoga County, even though the county has only 12 percent of the state’s population.

In areas of Cuyahoga County where more than half of the residents are black, sales per capita - $234 - are three times higher than in areas where a majority of residents are white.

Sales are heavier in lower-income neighborhoods of Cuyahoga County. Where the household income is below the county median of $35,381, per-capita betting is twice as high as areas above the median.

The analysis also showed that, in general, per capita sales of all lottery games increase as an area’s median income declines.

State lotteries typically caution, however, against using sales data to assess who bets because the data show only where the tickets are bought, not where the bettor lives. But Ohio Lottery records of Pick 4 winners and a 1994 profile of Pick 4 players commissioned by the lottery suggest that the numbers games are most popular in urban areas.

In Cleveland, tens of millions of dollars a year are wagered at dozens of inner-city supermarkets, corner stores, check-cashing businesses and delis. Many regular bettors thumb through “dream books” that recommend numbers to play based on dreams or events in players’ lives - a practice that originated in the era of illegal numbers.

When favorite numbers like 7-l-l come up in the Pick 3 game, the lottery loses big. On March 29, for example, the lottery paid out $6 million - 4M times that day’s sales - when 7-l-l was drawn. During the course of a year, however, the lottery wins more than it loses. In 1998, for example, it paid out 47 percent of the $527 million in Pick 3 and Pick 4 wagers it took in. The numbers games account for abqut a quarter of the lottery’s overall sales. Super Lotto tickets, at $1 each, account for another quarter, and sales of instant tickets, ranging from $1 to $5, make up the rest.

Sales records show that city bettors are much less interested in the Super Lotto.  Some believe that the twice-a-week, higher odds Super Lotto game is rigged to favor players in the suburbs or rural areas of Ohio. 

I tell them that it’s random, said Sunni Ahmed, manager of the Corlett Mini-Stop in southeast Cleveland. "They say, ‘No.’ They don’t trust the lottery."

Taft also sought to bring Ohio into a one-time ‘Millennium" game with several other states, but the General Assembly rejected the idea.

Lottery sales started dropping after reaching an all-time high, of $2.31 billion in 1996, as gamblers left Ohio for casinos and bet the jumbo-jackpot Powerball lottery offered by bordering states A cutback in advertising under former governor George Voinovich, who opposed any expansion of gambling in Ohio, didn’t help.

But with Voinovich preparim last fall to leave the governor's office for the U.S. Senate, his lottery director, William Howell, began exploring opportunities to expand.

"Obviously, the fellow I worked for was not interested," Howell said recently.

Under Taft, the lottery’s annual advertising budget jumped to $21.3 million from $15.5 million. The advertising is put before a wide array of potential bettors, from sports fans at Jacobs Field to commuters passing the Super   Lotto Jackpot billboards on expressways.

The lottery also sponsors a variety of events - from fund-raisers for the United Negro College Fund to theatrical performances at Playhouse Square to the Fourth of July fireworks show in Cincinnati - all in an effort to attract people to its games.

The games’ appeal to the urban poor has long concerned social policy experts. The National Gambling Impact Study Commission, a nine-member body appointed by President Clinton, last summer recommended a pause in the expansion of all legal gambling until the pros and cons can be studied further.

In particular, the commission expressed “serious concerns” about state lotteries’ dependence “upon a small number of less-educated and poor individuals” for the bulk of their proceeds.

Brown said he had decided to hold a second daily numbers drawing long before the commission issued its recommendation. He also noted that a Gallup Poll done just before the commission’s report came out showed how the general public feels about legal-ized gambling: Nearly two-thirds of adults approve of it.

Still, some community leaders said the Ohio Lottery should have considered the impact that offering more betting opportunities could have on the urban poor.

Councilman Cimperman said some players in the struggling neighborhoods he represents are gambling away money that should go to food, rent and utilities.

“You had one drawing in place. Fine. People have a choice to play,” Cimperman said. “But now you’ve got a second drawing, and you can bury people who are already playing too much.”

Councilwoman Patricia Britt, who represents several of the highest-betting neighborhoods, said she is concerned by the amount of money her constituents spend on numbers games. She said she wishes the money was spent in a manner that would benefit the neighborhoods.

“I think people get lost in the dream,” she said.

The second daily drawing is a mistake, said the Rev. Marvin McMickle, whose Antioch Baptist Church serves East Side neighborhoods where numbers games get heavy play.

“When you know people use this not as a game but as a last hope . . . and you increase the number of times they can keep losing, I think it’s unconscionable,” said McMickle.

Brown rejects such criticism, saying it’s presumptuous for any- one to judge who should or shouldn’t gamble. “Who are they to make that ’ kind of judgment?” Brown said. “Don’t underestimate the intelli- gence of the people who participate in these activities. ‘I don’t like anyone telling me what I can and can’t do, and I don’t think they do either. . . . The key element is that [people] don’t have to play.”

Other community leaders don’t fault the lottery or the bettors, but they are nevertheless concerned about the amount of money bet on Pick 3 and Pick 4.

State Sen. C.J. Prentiss, whose district includes the areas of heaviest Pick 3 and Pick 4 bet- ting, said it’s “wrongheaded” to blame the lottery.

“The lottery is there to make money,” she said.

Many people are scraping by in difficult, low-wage jobs and “take $2 and see if they can’t hit it big,” she said. The issue in her district shouldn’t be whether the lottery is expanding but rather the lack of decent-paying jobs and bleak prospects for the future, she said.

“The issue is hope,” she said.