Slak Phattana was launched as the inaugural Laos lotto in March 2012. This weekly lottery offers its main prize – a car – as an attractive incentive. One of Laos’s most popular lotteries, it can be played online and is significantly cheaper than Thai lotteries. Operated by Insee Trading company each week and run with random selection of numbers by customers, Insee Trading’s knowledge of which numbers people choose has led them to manipulate results and thus raise suspicion of dishonesty within its system.
Laos Lotto is a weekly drawing with prizes ranging from cars to cash. Players can purchase tickets in major cities like Vientiane, Luang Prabang and Pakse for just 3,000 kip each from bank exchange booths, street vendors or hotels.
An orphan who spent her youth growing up in an orphanage during Laos’ turbulent 1960s and ’70s will use part of her $55 million lottery jackpot prize money to track down her birth family in Laos. Now living in Seattle, Washington grandmother Xia Rattanakone plans on donating her share to her adopted Laotian family while using the remainder to travel in search of them.
Though gambling is illegal in Laos, there are certain economic zones throughout the country which rent land out to foreign casinos to stimulate tourism and increase income for Laos residents. Their legal standing remains unclear but many offshore casinos accept players from Laos.
Official Laos lottery operations are administered by the Ministry of Finance; however, informal football lotteries and lottery chances sold via short messaging services have become widespread throughout Laos since 1975. This has raised serious doubts regarding its integrity; Prime Minister Thongloun Sisoulith issued a directive urging Ministry of Finance and Public Security officials to work more closely on overseeing sales and distribution – specifically limiting drawings from state lotteries to one per week and handling winnings more transparently.
Charles Zuckerman will discuss the political, economic and moral history of lotteries in Laos during this presentation. He will detail his fieldwork in Luang Prabang where he studied lottery sellers and buyers before closing with a discussion and Q&A session.
TAEC is delighted to host Dr. Eric Zuckerman as part of the University of Wisconsin-Madison International Program’s Distinguished Lecture Series. Dr. Zuckerman’s work centers on language in social life, with publications covering gender and moral/communicative dimensions of gambling in Laos; more recent work conducted within Nakai-Nam Theun Protected Area has explored cultural diversity/convergence issues; in addition, he will discuss his research within its wider sociohistorical context by highlighting how state lotteries might shed light on Lao state enterprises more generally.