Oklahoma lottery’s soaring revenue boosts education funding, eyes online expansion

OKLAHOMA CITY, Okla. (KOKH) — The Oklahoma lottery is cashing in record high revenue, and that translates to record investments in education.

For every dollar Oklahomans spend on tickets, there’s around $0.25 that goes back to the classroom.

“The last two years we’ve been at about $87M. If you go back to 2017 it was $53M, so you can see that big jump that we’ve had,” Jay Finks, Executive Director of Oklahoma Lottery Commission said.

Finks was the sixth employee to work at the lottery commission nearly 19 years ago, so he’s seen the ups and downs of revenue.

He’s taken a gamble on the state’s success, and so far he’s got a winning hand, due to a recent law eliminating some of the prize limits.

“That’s kind of set that in motion so more prizes, more people win, more people play and that’s kind of set us into this kind of record setting last few years,” Finks said.

Of that pool of money, education takes the jackpot.

“Since our existence, there’s over $1.3B that the lottery has done towards education, so that’s $1.3B in additional revenue to education,” Finks said.

Each around $80M year brings wins for players, students and teachers.

“The first $65M, about half goes to common ed and half goes to higher ed. That’s kind of how the formula works, and then everything over $65M goes to what’s called the teacher empowerment fund and that’s a fund for teacher pay raises,” he said.

Finks wants to raise the wager, betting that the state will make money if players aren’t limited to in-person betting.

“Our push right now is to get iLottery. iLottery is the ability to play on your phone or on a computer, but really playing over the internet. So if you forgot to buy a Powerball ticket and the drawing is tonight, you could go on your phone, buy a Powerball ticket. You could play a scratch ticket on your phone,” Finks said. “There’s about 14-15 states that have it right now.”

Currently, online gaming is illegal in Oklahoma, and there’s been an ongoing battle between the Governor and the tribes to change that.