It’s 1974, illegal bookies are everywhere and Massachusetts’ brand-new state-run lottery is struggling to compete. But a simple piece of paper is about to change the game forever: the nation’s first scratch ticket. John Koza was -- according to him -- one of the first people in the world to hold an undergraduate degree in computer science, and also one of the first to pursue a PhD in the subject. When Koza sees something that’s not working smoothly, he gets in there, whatever the problem is. And in the 1960s and 70s, that problem was scratch tickets.
Never in American history has it been so easy to gamble, legally at least. We’ve got casinos, sports betting, online poker, keno — but it was all made possible by state lotteries, which brought gambling out of the shadows and into the public square — into the government itself.
“Scratch & Win” follows the unlikely rise of America’s most successful lottery. We begin in 1970s Boston, with state bureaucrats going toe to toe with mafia bookmakers, and each other, as they struggle to launch the state's greatest innovation: the scratch ticket. But the story reaches all the way to the present moment. How do we feel about the gambling industry that lotteries helped summon into being? And should the state be in this business at all?
“Scratch & Win” is made by the Peabody Award-winning team behind “The Big Dig,” produced by GBH News and distributed by PRX.
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