UNC sports to lose lotto ads

Bowles: No more deals with system

Listen up, sports fans: The state lottery, which raises money for education, has been ejected from sporting events at North Carolina's public universities.

Advertising and sponsorship contracts between the lottery and universities expired last week and apparently won't be renewed. UNC President Erskine Bowles asked UNC chancellors to end the practice.

Earlier this year, a bipartisan group of legislators moved to ban advertising the lottery at high schools and college campuses, even though it benefits the people who attend those institutions. Portions of the proceeds from the state lottery go to public schools and to college scholarships.

The bill that the group eventually got passed in the state House would ban lottery ads at high school events but was stripped of language that applied to universities. The bill is pending in the Senate.

The legislative action apparently got Bowles' attention. In a brief memo, he said lottery ads at sports events send the wrong message.

"While it is legal for our students who are 18 or older to participate in the lottery, the lottery is nonetheless a form of gambling, and I feel strongly that we should not encourage gambling by our students," he wrote in May to the chancellors. "The University's educational role extends beyond the classroom, and we should keep that responsibility in mind as we make decisions about which entities our campuses contract with for advertising or athletic sponsorships."

The president asked that chancellors avoid future contracts and terminate existing agreements, if possible.

The president's request may not mean an end to lottery ads on sports broadcasts, said Gary Sobba, general manager of Tar Heel Sports Marketing, which owns multimedia rights for UNC sports. The lottery could still advertise on college sports broadcasts by going through the radio stations, for example, Sobba said.

"Most schools are trying to get clarification on what he means," Sobba said. "Potentially everyone could lose money."

Thousands at stake

The lottery spent more than $385,000 with seven universities in the past nine months.

Deals included signs, radio ads, public-address announcements, check presentation ceremonies and tickets to football and basketball games that went to lottery retailers. The schools included N.C. Central University, N.C. State University and UNC-Chapel Hill.

Universities are still catching up with the new rules. On Friday, a lottery ad promoting prizes of $500 to $50,000 was stripped across the top of Tarheelblue.com, the official Web site of Carolina athletics.

It was removed when a reporter inquired about it.

Bowles' decision means the loss of a captive audience of thousands of sports fans for the lottery, which failed to meet sales goals in its first year of operation.

Alice Garland, a spokeswoman for the lottery, said the president's action was puzzling.

"We think it's a good venue," she said. "We think college alumni -- that's a good audience. I think it's a bigger loss for the universities because it was a good source of revenue." She added that the lottery has never advertised at high school contests.

The NCAA, which oversees college athletics nationally, does not prohibit universities from taking lottery advertising but discourages it.

Sobba pointed out that large public universities in all of the surrounding states -- Virginia, Georgia, South Carolina and Tennessee -- have major advertising partnerships with their state lotteries.

UNC's move to drop the lottery ads found some who applauded.

"I'm very gratified that the president has made this decision," said Rep. Dale Folwell, a Republican from Forsyth County and a sponsor of the bill to ban lottery ads in schools.

Folwell became interested in the issue when his then-12-year-old son asked why there was a "lottery player of the game." The legislator said he was concerned that college sports fans include children who shouldn't be enticed by gambling.

"I didn't think that should be promoted in those venues," Folwell said.