Tony Leys

tleys@dmreg.com

Iowa gambling regulators, who blew the whistle Wednesday on a University of Iowa tuition raffle for Hawkeye football ticket-buyers, pondered a related question this morning: Would a hot-dog gun shooting free sausages to Iowa Cubs spectators also constitute an illegal raffle?

The question came up after the Iowa Department of Inspections and Appeals took issue Wednesday with the UI's planned promotion.

The university had announced that it would give away a free year of tuition to five students chosen from those who spent up to $175 on season tickets to football games. The potential legal problems include that state law says raffle tickets sold for charities may only be bought with cash, not credit cards, regulators said. Also, not all season-ticket packages cost the same, which could violate a uniform-price rule for raffles.

The university suspended the promotion Wednesday evening, drawing groans from some Hawkeye fans. On Twitter, fans questioned how far the regulators could push their no-fun attitude. If the free-tuition drawing must be regulated as a raffle, they asked, wouldn't the same rules apply to any giveaway inside a sporting event? After all, to have a chance at snagging those prizes, people have to buy tickets to the game.

Hence the hot-dog-gun conundrum.

David Werning, spokesman for the Department of Inspections and Appeals, said agency experts considered the issue and decided that a hot-dog gun is not a raffle. The airborne snacks are incidental to people's decision to attend a game, he said. "You're not buying a ticket just for the chance to catch a hot dog," he said. Such promotions "are just basically to keep the crowd happy."

(For the record, Werning emphasized that he was not saying the Iowa Cubs need artificial methods to keep fans happy. The state bureaucrat already has Hawkeye fans mad at him. He's not looking to jam a stick into the Cubs-fan beehive.)

UI officials started discussing the raffle brouhaha this morning with a state lawyer who specializes in gambling issues, Werning said. He said there could be ways for the promotion to resume legally. One way, he said, would be for the university to provide a way for people to participate in the tuition giveaway without purchasing football tickets.