There Is Nothing Government Operates That Cannot Lose Money

From marijuana, to whorehouses to now legalized gambling.  Government somehow always manages to lose money on a sure thing.

Reason: D.C. Managed To Lose $4 Million on Its Own Sports Betting App

After the D.C. Council approved sports gambling in the district in 2018, it further authorized a single company to develop the GambetDC app, at a cost of $215 million over five years. In return, the District hoped to see annual tax revenues of $20 million from bets placed. Instead, the lottery admitted this week that the D.C. government only took in about $1.5 million from the app in 2021, its first full year of operation. In fact, after adjusting for the cost of advertising the app, the government actually lost more than $4 million last year. 

One has to wonder at the relationship, if any, of the company to any of the City Council members or officials for this kind of deal to get authorized, or is it just standard government inefficiency and lack of any business acumen and oversight at work?

If the rosiest projection is it costs $215 million and you're expecting a revenue of only $20 million per year, then that's over a 10 year period before you even see any positive cash flow from the venture (DC council, I'm sure, hates the word profit).  

That's bad enough, but to then show a loss of $4 million a year due to it not working destroys these projections entirely and makes you wonder if anyone did any due dilligence on this at all.  DC losing money from legalized gambling is simply nuts.

Of course, it's not their money at stake, and it's unlikely that any of the decision makers will suffer any consequences from this which partially explains why these inexplicable losses keep occurring - the ones making the decision have no skin in the game and no downside to their bad bets, and in fact win either way while the taxpayers take the loss.