Keno an instant winner for state

Numbers game rolled out in late April generated $12M in sales in first 10 weeks

Keno, the bingo-like numbers game the Connecticut Lottery Corp. rolled out in late April, generated about $12 million in sales in its first 10 weeks, helping the lottery post the best fiscal year in its history and fueling rosy projections for the current year.

State officials said this week that the lottery transferred $337.5 million — a yet-to-be audited number — to the state’s general fund in fiscal 2015-16, which ended June 30.

About 28 percent of lottery sales goes to the general fund.

After the casino-owning Indian tribes, the Mashantucket Pequots and the Mohegans, collected their 25 percent share of gross keno revenue, 12.5 percent apiece, the lottery’s general fund contribution stood at $336.4 million, according to Gian-Carl Casa of the state Office of Policy and Management.

That number is over 5 percent more than the lottery transferred to state coffers the previous year.

The lottery’s contribution to the state has gone up in each of the last seven years.

By contrast, the tribal casinos, Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun, which send 25 percent of their slot-machine winnings to the state, contributed $265.9 million in 2015-16, a 0.8 percent decline over the previous year.

Mohegan Sun’s year-over-year contribution was up slightly while Foxwoods’ was down by 2 percent.

Though the casinos’ contribution was $1 million less than the state’s most recent projection, it exceeded the $258.8 million estimate contained in the state’s original budget proposal for 2016-17, Casa pointed out.

The casinos’ annual slots payments to the state have declined by 38 percent since their 2006-07 peak of $430.5 million.

Lottery officials have high expectations for the current fiscal year, projecting $1.246 billion in sales, including $65 million in keno sales, which is well above earlier estimates.

At a June 28 meeting of the Connecticut Lottery Corp.’s board of directors, Anne Noble, the corporation’s president and chief executive officer, said the lottery expects to focus on expanding the ranks of the more than 2,900 retailers who sell keno.

Some 340 locations, typically bars and restaurants, have TV monitors

Some 340 locations, typically bars and restaurants, have TV monitors that display keno drawings. Equipping more locations with monitors is another of the lottery’s goals, lottery officials say.

that display keno drawings. Equipping more locations with monitors is another of the lottery’s goals, lottery officials say.

As for the casinos, which face the prospect of more competition from out-of-state casinos, both existing and yet to be built, the state anticipates further revenue declines.

The latest projections, Casa said, put casino slots contributions to the state at $267 million in 2016-17, $267.3 million in 2017-18, $199.0 million in 2018-19 and $196.6 million in 2019-20.

MGM Springfield, a $950 million resort casino under construction near Connecticut’s northern border, is scheduled to open in late 2018. The Mashantucket and Mohegan tribes hope to counter its competitive impact by jointly opening a commercial gaming facility in the Hartford area.

Before such a facility could open, the state would have to legalize commercial gaming on nontribal land.