Southland Gaming’s video lottery system generates substantial, quantifiable economic benefits to the community. First, local governments can earn significant revenue through lottery-generated revenues and by the collection of taxes applicable to both lottery winnings and the additional income earned by Southland Gaming and its partners. Second, the video lottery stimulates spending in local communities by providing a new entertainment option to attract incremental tourist and spending at local businesses. Finally, the video lottery provides additional jobs, both directly to lottery employees, and indirectly through enabling local businesses to hire additional workers.

Revenues earned through video lottery can be directly earmarked to fund education, public health, infrastructure, or other projects, or can be added to the local government’s general fund. Such programs have included pharmaceuticals for the aging, college scholarships, and athletic programs in other areas that operate video lotteries. In addition, Southland Gaming itself is committed to a high degree of community involvement, and regularly funds scholarships, student achievement awards, and teacher-appreciation and support programs. Southland Gaming also makes contributions to a wide variety of local charities, church programs, and other local organizations as part of its mission to develop a positive and active role in the community.

For a list of contributions made to charities please see our Charitable Contributions page.

The gaming industry, encompassing commercial casinos, Native American casinos, lotteries, legal bookmaking, charitable gaming, and pari-mutuel betting, generated $90.9 billion in gross gambling revenues in the United States in 2006, of which approximately $19 billion was earned by state governments through various state-operated lotteries. Revenues from state-operated lotteries have contributed significant funds to state budgets, and are particularly attractive to government because lottery sales are directly paid to the local government. In 2007, of all state government revenue attributable to gaming as a whole, 74.7% was attributable to lottery operations, while only 21.6% was attributable to revenue earned from taxes paid by casino operators and patrons. Currently, forty-two U.S. states operate lotteries of some form, as well as several Caribbean nations and territories, including Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, Grenada, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

In general, several U.S. state governments have also earmarked significant proportions of lottery-generated revenue for specific projects, particularly public education, rather than depositing lottery revenues into state general funds.

Traditional lottery programs are not capable of limiting illegal gaming. The video lottery has been successful in controlling the spread of illegal gaming operations because all coin-operated slot machines and video slot machines that are not connected to the video lottery’s central operating system can more easily be identified.

To see more about how the video lottery central system functions please see our Video Lottery Information page.