The 2024 NHL draft lottery will feature Boston University center Macklin Celebrini, a prospect many expect to transform the fortunes of the team that selects him No. 1 overall this summer. But how is this all decided by lottery? What makes a team so good that they deserve the top pick in a given year, rather than simply having the worst regular-season record? The answer lies in the lottery.
Lottery is a word with a long history and many different meanings, but in modern times the word typically refers to a game where participants buy tickets for a chance to win a prize based on the drawing of lots, which can be a fixed sum of money or goods. The prize fund is usually derived from the sale of tickets and, as with a conventional raffle, there is risk that a large number of tickets will not be sold, leaving the organizer with insufficient funds to pay the winner.
Initially, state lotteries were little more than traditional raffles, with ticket sales and the prize fund growing quickly, but then plateauing and even declining, prompting expansion into new games such as keno, video poker, and scratch-off tickets. Because they are run as businesses with a focus on maximizing revenues, lotteries also engage in extensive advertising to persuade people to spend their hard-earned dollars on them.
All of this raises questions about the nature and purposes of state lotteries, which arose in the immediate postwar period as a way for states to finance an expanding array of social safety net programs without burdening working-class taxpayers with especially onerous taxes. Lotteries have a remarkably strong popular appeal, but the truth is that they are fundamentally problematic, not least in the ways they encourage gambling addiction and promote irrational, irrational behavior.