11/30/2008

Associated Press

Beginning in December, a TV actor dressed as a knight will urge more Oregonians to try their hand at video gambling.

The Oregon Lottery is hoping more people venture into any of Oregon's 2,353 video lottery retailers after a Jan. 1 smoking ban forces all the establishments to go smoke free.

It will be the first time in Oregon's 16 years in the video gambling business that the Oregon Lottery advertises video poker and slot machine gaming.

Faced with the possible loss of tens of millions of dollars in lottery revenue because of the smoking ban, the lottery is ending its self-imposed practice of limiting advertising to promoting scratch tickets and lottery drawings.

However it puts the state in the position promoting a form of gaming that some consider highly addictive.

Until now the state has avoided advertising video poker and slots because of "the sensitivity of the product," said lottery spokesman Chuck Baumann.

The state gradually has relaxed its marketing restrictions on video lottery since Oregon put its first poker game terminals in taverns in 1992. Initially, advertising signs were allowed only inside near the terminals themselves. Later, the state allowed retailers to put up banners and window signs.

The new ads begin Dec. 8 as lottery profits decline.

The Oregon Office of Economic Analysis has projected video lottery earnings to fall $35 million below projections for the current 2007-09 biennium and an additional $107 million for the 2009-11 biennia because of the souring economy and the smoking ban.

"We've had positive sales (growth) year after year after year ever since it began," Baumann said. "We need to do something in order to continue that, and if going to advertising helps that product, then, yes, we'll look at it."

He described one of the new ads: A man has dozed off in his easy chair, the TV remote control still in his hand. The man awakens to see a stranger, dressed in armor, announcing himself as the "knight of fun."

They then head off on horseback to a bar, where video lottery games are advertised in the window. Once inside, the video image of spinning slot machine reels appear. The idea is to introduce video lottery to those who haven't played slots or poker, perhaps because they don't like smoky bars.

The ad campaign will be watched closely, both by retailers and by those who worry about what some have called the crack cocaine of gambling: video lottery.

Jeffrey Maratta, a Portland-based problem-gambling consultant, said he would withhold judgment until seeing the ads. But he said he worries that such a campaign would "normalize" an activity that has proven addictive, and financially ruinous, to thousands of Oregonians.

The Oregon Restaurant Association, which represents most of the state's video lottery retailers, is neutral, said its lobbyist, Bill Perry. He said retailers worry about a backlash, such as the revival of past efforts to curtail lottery advertising or to prohibit video lottery.

But Perry said the lottery had little choice if the state wants to meet the Legislature's revenue projections.

The 2007 Legislature passed the smoking ban. But the budget it adopted did not reflect the anticipated drop in video lottery revenues. At the close of the 2007 session, lottery revenues were projected at $1.15 billion for 2007-09. Last week, that was reduced by $35 million.

"The Legislature put them in a tremendous bind by not budgeting the loss in lottery revenue when this (smoking ban) passed," Perry said. "Trying to get additional players is really the only option they have."

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Information from: The Register-Guard, http://www.registerguard.com