Instant lotteries: scam or not?

What is it?

Very often you hear, that lotteries are "still that scam", that it is impossible to win a normal amount in them, that they are specially organized to deceive the population, etc.. P. I really wanted to figure it out, Is it so? And who can even organize a lottery?

Who can organize and how?

so, let's turn to the current legislation. According to the federal law "On Lotteries" from 11.11.2003 r. № 138-FZ:

T. is., in simpler terms, the organizer of any lottery can only be the federal executive body, authorized by the Government of the Russian Federation, - Ministry of Sports of the Russian Federation, Russian Defense Ministry, Ministry of Finance of the Russian Federation.

However, this is just an organization. But if we continue reading the above law, then we find, that the lottery is being held operator.

T. is. Any legal entity can hold the lottery, concluded a contract with the organizer and a contract with the distributor.

so, anyone can organize a lottery, if only he had a legal entity (opening an LLC in Russia is no problem), and its leader and chief accountant have not been convicted in the past for economic crimes. There are also some small restrictions., as, eg, founder, the head and participants of this legal entity should not have previously been lottery operators, in which they could influence their (lotteries) holding, as a result of which the obligations regarding the transfer of targeted payments were not met. Well, it's really simple.

So that, one might say, that there are no special restrictions on the lottery.

What does it cost?

so, expenses in this type of business are as follows.

The official state fee is very small, Total 6000 rub. However, this is only the tip of the iceberg.. Obtaining a license is preceded by the preparation of documents, production of an original layout of a lottery ticket. Why be there a sin to hide, the costs of favoring government officials issuing licenses are also quite large.

This is followed by the cost of printing tickets (usually 15–20 % from proceeds), staff training, technical means, advertising (can reach tens and hundreds of millions, so in prime time on channel 1 a minute of advertising costs about 2 000 000 rub.), distributors' remuneration (usually around 25 % of the proceeds) and t. P. Amounts can be quite small. Plus prize pool, which by law should not be lower 50 % from the proceeds of the lottery.

According to some experts, organizing and holding a lottery costs at least 3 million - 4 million dollars.

Hence the conclusion follows, that the lottery organizer must be very wealthy. Ordinary citizen, and most of small and medium-sized businesses cannot afford this.