Lottery Statistics (2026)

The US lottery is a nine-figure-a-day business. Americans spent about $104.7 billion on tickets in 2024 by the Census-based count, a record, with roughly $70.2 billion returned as prizes and $29.7 billion sent to state programs after administrative costs (see the table below).

Industry trackers such as La Fleur's report an even larger total, near $113 billion for fiscal 2024, because they capture additional products in some states. Either way, lottery sales dwarf the box office and rival what Americans spend on many everyday staples.

Of every lottery dollar, the biggest slice goes right back out as prizes: about 67 cents in 2024. Roughly 28 cents reaches state programs, and the remaining 5 cents or so covers operating costs and retailer commissions of about 5.5% (see the chart below).

That prize share is far higher than most casino or sports-betting hold, which is part of the appeal. But because so much is recycled as prizes, the lottery is an expensive way for states to raise money compared with ordinary taxes.

Lottery sales have nearly doubled in a decade. By the Census series, national sales rose from $59.3 billion in 2012 to $103.3 billion in 2023 and $104.7 billion in 2024 (see the chart and table below). The broader industry series climbed from about $91 billion in 2019 to roughly $113 billion.

The single largest jump came between 2020 and 2021, when sales rose about $15.4 billion as pandemic-era stimulus and record jackpots pulled buyers in. Growth has since slowed to low single digits, closer to overall inflation.

Not all lottery games are equal sellers. Instant scratch tickets are the workhorse, making up roughly 60% to 65% of US sales in recent years (an industry estimate, so treat the precise share as approximate). Draw games such as Powerball, Mega Millions, and daily numbers make up the rest.

Scratch tickets win on accessibility and instant gratification, which is why states keep launching higher-price instant games. Draw games spike only when a multi-state jackpot rolls into the hundreds of millions and casual buyers pile in.

A handful of large states drive the national total. California and New York each generated roughly $9 billion in lottery sales in 2024, with Florida near $8.8 billion and Texas near $8.4 billion. Together those four states accounted for more than a third of all US lottery sales.

That concentration tracks population, but not perfectly. Spending intensity per resident varies enormously, so a smaller state such as Massachusetts can punch far above its size on a per-capita basis (see the next section).

Per person, Massachusetts is in a league of its own, at about $915 per resident in 2023 and roughly $856 in 2024 press figures, more than any other state by a wide margin (see the chart and table below). Rhode Island, Virginia, Georgia, and New York round out the top five.

At the other end, North Dakota residents spent about $50 per person, with Wyoming, Montana, New Mexico, and Oklahoma all under $95. The US average was about $320 per resident in lottery states, so the top and bottom differ by a factor of roughly 18.

Not everyone plays. Forty-five states plus Washington, DC run a lottery, but five do not: Alabama, Alaska, Hawaii, Nevada, and Utah. Their reasons range from religious objection (Utah) to protecting existing gambling revenue (Nevada).

Residents of holdout states often cross borders to buy tickets, especially for large multi-state jackpots, so the lack of a home lottery does not mean zero play. It simply means the sales, and the revenue, land in a neighboring state.

About half of US adults buy a lottery ticket in a given year, roughly 49% in Gallup's polling, which makes the lottery the single most popular form of gambling in America (see the table below). Participation was higher, around 57%, in the late 1990s.

The stereotype that only low-income people play is wrong. Gallup found participation actually rises with income and education up to a point: middle earners ($36,000 to $90,000) were the most likely to play at 56%, and college graduates played more than high-school dropouts.

Participation and burden are different things. While higher earners are slightly more likely to buy a ticket, lower-income households that do play spend a far larger share of their income, which is why economists almost unanimously call the lottery a regressive tax.

Studies find low-income players devote roughly 5% of income to tickets (some estimates run higher for the very poorest), and households earning under $25,000 average close to $600 a year versus about $289 for those above $100,000. The income elasticity of lottery demand is below 1, the technical hallmark of regressivity.

The jackpot math is unforgiving. The odds of winning the Powerball jackpot are about 1 in 292.2 million on a $2 ticket, and Mega Millions is about 1 in 290.5 million on a $5 ticket after an April 2025 game change (it was 1 in 302.6 million before).

The overall odds of winning any prize are far better, roughly 1 in 25 for Powerball and 1 in 23 for Mega Millions, but most of those prizes are small. For perspective, a single ticket is far more likely to be a total loss than to return even the ticket price.

Jackpots have ballooned as the games got harder to win, which lets prizes roll over for months. The record is the $2.04 billion Powerball won in California in November 2022, followed by a $1.817 billion Powerball in December 2025 and a $1.787 billion Powerball in September 2025 (see the table below).

The advertised number is the annuity paid over 29 years. Winners who take the lump sum receive roughly half, and then owe the 37% top federal tax plus most state income taxes, so a $2 billion headline can net well under $700 million.

Only about 27 cents of each dollar reaches state programs, and about 27 states earmark at least part of it for education. In fiscal 2024, US lotteries sent almost $30.6 billion to beneficiary programs by La Fleur's count, but the share varies from roughly 20% to 35% of sales by state.

The catch is that earmarks rarely add money. California's lottery raised more than $2.25 billion for schools in 2024, yet that is only about 1% of K-12 funding, and legislatures often quietly trim other school funding once lottery dollars flow in.

How much a state returns as prizes varies widely (see the table below). Virginia returned about 73.5% of spending as prizes, the highest, with Maine and Missouri near 70%. At the bottom, Oregon, South Dakota, and West Virginia returned only about 20 cents per dollar.

The low-payout states usually run video-lottery terminals or keno, which are counted differently and pull the reported prize share down. As a rough national rule, ordinary lottery tickets return about two-thirds of sales as prizes.

Treated as entertainment, an occasional ticket is harmless. Treated as a wealth plan, it is a losing bet: the expected value of a lottery ticket is negative, and the 1-in-292-million jackpot odds mean the typical outcome is simply losing the money you paid.

The contrast with investing is stark. The average American household's roughly $320 a year of lottery spending, invested at a historical stock-market return of about 7% after inflation, would grow to more than $13,000 over 20 years. The lottery sells a dream; consistent investing builds the real thing.