Hitting the Jackpot: Rebecca Hargrove's Winning Strategy
Meet Rebecca Hargrove who's made the lottery into a billion-dollar business.
NASHVILLE, Tenn., March 28, 2009 — -- You may not have heard of Rebecca Paul Hargrove, but in the lottery world, she's a celebrity.
The brash, hard-charging CEO of the Tennessee lottery has accomplished what nobody else has in the state-run gaming business. She ran the lottery in Illinois where sales topped $1.3 billion. Next, Hargrove moved to Florida, where she set a new record: $95 million in sales the first week.
In Florida, Hargrove's marketing strategy included appearing in ads and handing out checks. But some thought she was too flamboyant and she ultimately was fired.
She wasn't out of work long. Georgia tapped her to start its lottery and ticket sales increased 10 percent every year for the decade she was in charge.
Now the 60-year-old dynamo leads one of the nation's newest and most successful state-run gaming operations -- the Tennessee lottery.
Her critics say she's promoting a "fool's tax," taking advantage of people who are not financially sophisticated, and this at a time when most people don't have a lot of spare money.
Hargrove brushes off the notion that lotteries manipulate those who are low-income or uneducated.
"Well, you use the word 'tax' and I have never known taxes to be voluntary," she said. "If you don't pay your taxes, you are going to go to jail. If you don't buy your lotto ticket, you aren't going to jail."
"There are a handful of people who may buy more lottery tickets than they should and I wish that didn't happen," she said. "There are people who have addictions. I am addicted to Diet Coke. You can be addicted to anything. I'm not sure that makes shopping bad or Diet Cokes bad or lotteries bad."
As the economy has crumbled, more and more have turned to the dream of that ultimate windfall.
"Lotteries are huge business," Hargrove said. "Let me put it in perspective for you. Last year, the movie industry ... all the box office receipts across the country were about $9 billion. Music: $20 billion. Salty snacks, pretzels, chips, all that stuff ... about $40 billion. Fifty-five billion dollars of lottery tickets were sold -- $55 billion!"
