Iowa Lottery set to launch $50-a-ticket scratch-off game with $500,000 jackpot

Would you pay $50 for a lottery ticket?

You'll get your chance beginning April 4, when the Iowa Lottery will begin selling a $50 scratch-off game, becoming the 15th state to do so.

Currently, the highest-priced Iowa Lottery scratch-offs are two $30 games that offer top prizes of $300,000. The new $500,000 Cash scratch game will offer prizes ranging from $50 to $500,000.

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Iowa Lottery spokesperson Mary Neubauer said that although the $50 game is new to Iowa, the games have been around in some other states for years.

"The price point is an industry standard that dates back to 2007," Neubauer said. "Iowa retailers with locations in other states that already have a $50 scratch game note high player interest in the product, and a strong performance for it in the other jurisdictions."

Texas introduced the first $50 scratch-off ticket in 2007, when only five state lotteries sold scratch tickets for more than $20, according to lottery trade publication La Fleur's Magazine. But it took until 2021 for it to be more widely adopted, La Fleur's said.

In May, Texas upped the ante again as it began selling $100 scratch-off tickets with a top prize of $20 million.

High-priced games carry lower odds

The appeal of the high-dollar scratch-off games is that they come with lower odds. In Iowa's $500,000 Cash game, odds of winning a $50 prize will be 1 in 6.67, and odds of winning the top prize will be 1 in 120,000, Neubauer said. That compares to the current odds of winning the 45-state PowerBall game: 1 in 38.2 for any prize and 1 in 292,201,338 for the top prize.

But Lia Nower, the director of the Rutgers University Center for Gambling Studies & Addiction Counselor Training Program, said that while the odds may be lower, it's who they attract that concerns her and others in her field. In disproportionate numbers, she said, the players in lottery games tend to be people with lower incomes.

Texas itself concurs. Scratch-off game are more likely to be played by "less educated and lower income" residents, according to the Texas Lottery Commission's research. Its analysis found that "unemployed (players) were more likely to purchase scratch-off tickets than employed and retired" players.

Lotteries appeal to people with lesser means because they "represent some hope of making money without a significant investment," Nower said, characterizing them as a "regressive tax on the poor."

"These high-dollar tickets are an effort on the part of the lottery to get their primary patrons — people who don't have a lot of money to spend — to spend more," she said. "While the odds can be slightly (lower), they are still bad and most people will lose most of the time."

The lottery's Neubauer said Nower's argument against the high-dollar games "makes no sense from a real-world perspective."

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"A business based upon a model of serving those who cannot afford its products will not be successful for long," she said. "Throughout its 38-year history, the Iowa Lottery has taken seriously its commitment to responsibly raise proceeds for state causes while providing a local entertainment option across the state. About 80 percent of adult Iowans play the lottery, and we therefore have always considered all Iowans 21 and older to be our audience." 

The Austin American-Statesman contributed to this article.

Philip Joens covers retail, real estate and RAGBRAI for the Des Moines Register. He can be reached at 515-284-8184, pjoens@registermedia.com or on Twitter @Philip_Joens.