Magazine Publisher Tries ‘Crap Shoot’ Before Making Lottery a Success

Publisher Sam Valenza Jr. acknowledges he rolled a “huge crap-shoot” four years ago when he gambled his pension money that lottery players would support a magazine aimed just at them.

Forty-four issues later, Valenza says Lottery Player’s magazine has grown from an initial investment of less than $15,000 into a monthly publication with a circulation of 180,000 and gross revenues expected to approach $1 million this year.

“It was a market without a medium,” Valenza said. “It was obvious, you could see the popularity of lotteries.”

Run by the 49-year-old publisher with five full-time employees from a crowded office in this Philadelphia suburb, the monthly often features beaming new millionaires on its covers.

Lots of Photographs

The pages are packed with black-and-white photographs of check-holding lottery winners and stories that herald the sudden wealth of dozens of winners and their plans for spending it.

There are, of course, tips on playing lotteries--next month’s issue discusses how to cover the most number combinations for the least money. There are columnists who evaluate the odds.

The magazine also contains lists of winning numbers from the 22 states that conduct lotteries. Valenza said the emphasis on records is part of his goal to make his magazine a chronicle of lotteries similar to “what the Sporting News is to baseball . . . or what the Racing Form is to horse racing.”

He also wants the magazine to serve as a “watchdog over the industry.”

As an example, Valenza pointed to a story in the November, 1984, issue warning that a $5, five-game ticket in the Connecticut lottery was not entirely random, as advertised.

Valenza explained that the computer had been programmed to provide five separate number combinations, with no duplications. Thus, the article contended, a player must buy five individual tickets to receive five “completely random” chances.

GTECH Corp., the Providence, R.I., firm that designed the system, responded that its surveys showed players preferred “five separate shots” at the “big one.”

40 Contributors

Chris Chrystall, Lottery Player’s news editor and the magazine’s only full-time editorial employee, said he has 40 contributors nationwide.

Chrystall, a former New York Daily News reporter, said he attempts to “appeal to a mass audience” in the magazine that sells on the newsstands for $1.95.

“Everybody likes to read about a big winner,” he said.

Lottery Player’s also offers brief stories on casino gaming and sports.

Valenza said the sports stories were both an acknowledgement of the volume of illegal sports betting in the country and preparation for the prospect that more states will legalize it.

Finding advertising was difficult while starting up the magazine, in part because lotteries cannot be advertised in states where they are illegal, he said.

Full-page advertisements in Lottery Player’s range from satellite television dishes to casino bus specials to Canadian lotteries, which are exempt from the restraint on interstate gaming advertising.

Valenza said the magazine has attracted some entrepreneurs who have developed a product to fit its audience, such as pens filled with miniature steel balls that can be shaken to select lottery numbers.