With sales down, lower Lotto prizes boost May profit
Bracken said the Lottery turned an estimated profit of $117.5 million in May, a $3.2 million increase over last May that the executive director attributed to a $7.9 million decrease in the value of scratch ticket grand prizes claimed last month compared to May 2024.
Get Starting Point
A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday.
Enter Email
Sign Up
Through 11 months of fiscal year 2025, the Lottery's year-to-date sales are down $182.4 million or 3.2 percent compared to the same time period in fiscal 2024. Jackpot-dependent multi-state draw games are posting some the most severe declines this year — Powerball sales are down $119.5 million or 58.5 percent and Mega Millions sales are down $37.4 million or 26.9 percent. Scratch tickets sales so far this year are down $52.4 million or 1.42 percent.
Advertisement
Bracken told the commission Tuesday that the Lottery's prize payout percentage, which affects how much revenue is converted to profit to be returned as local aid to cities and towns, remains elevated as the end of the year approaches. That figure has been on the commission's radar for most of fiscal 2025.
Advertisement
'Our estimated year-to-date prize payout for the first 11 months is 74.24 percent compared to 73.46 percent for the first 11 months of last fiscal year. And ... you'll see, as we've been watching the trend, the overall prize payout is tapering down, but it is still our highest prize payout that we've had in the last five fiscal years,' he said Tuesday.
With just one month's results left to count towards fiscal 2025, Bracken said the Lottery has so far generated an estimated profit of $990.1 million, which he said trails last year's pace by $88.8 million. The Lottery produced $1.159 billion in net profit during fiscal year 2024. Treasurer Deborah Goldberg
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
Thousands in Norway erroneously told they'd won millions in lottery
(NewsNation) — Thousands of Norwegian lottery players thought they'd finally hit the jackpot and become millionaires, only to find out it was an error. A conversion error led 'several thousand' players in Norway to be notified that they'd won big. Prize amounts, originally in euro cents, were multiplied by 100 rather than divided by 100 when converted into Norwegian kroner, according to local media. GameStop customers could be entitled to $4.5M settlement Norsk Tipping, Norway's state-owned gambling company, called the calculation mistake and the ensuing chaos a 'manual error' in a statement one day later. 'Norsk Tipping sincerely apologizes to everyone who was notified of an incorrect prize amount,' the company said. Norsk Tipping added that 'incorrect prize amounts were removed from the website and app on Friday evening.' According to the company, no customers were able to cash in their incorrect prize, though some had already started planning what to do with their winnings. How to file for unemployment Norsk Tipping CEO Tonje Sagstuen apologized and stepped down from her role Saturday. 'I am terribly sorry that we have disappointed so many, and I understand that people are angry with us,' Sagstuen said in a statement. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
3 hours ago
- Yahoo
Singapore Pools Toto draw results for 30 June; no winners for Group 1 prize of $1.23 million
SINGAPORE — Singapore Pools Toto draw for 30 June saw no winners the Group 1 prize of $1,228,144. The winning numbers for Monday's draw (30 June) are 11, 27, 31, 33, 34, and 36, with the additional number being 13. Since Group 1 had no winner, the prize amount of $1,228,144 will be snowballed to the next draw. The estimated jackpot for the next draw on Thursday (3 July at 6.30pm) is $2.5 million. The Group 2 winnings of $129,279 had 2 winning shares. The winning tickets were sold at: NTUC FairPrice Canberra Plaza – 133 Canberra View #B1-03/04 Canberra Plaza (1 QuickPick System 7 Entry) Superbowl Jurong Pte Ltd – 3 Yuan Ching Road (1 Ordinary Entry) Toto was launched in 1968 as the first lottery game in the history of Singapore Pools. The game got its name from a combination of the words 'Totalisator' and 'Lotto'. The current format of Toto sees six winning numbers and one additional number drawn from 49 numbers (1 to 49) every Monday and Thursday. The jackpot sum begins from $1,000,000. A snowballing feature, which allows for the prize to increase if there are no winners, was introduced to the game in 1981. The System Entry option, where you can pay to be able to pick more numbers, was added later that year. The winning numbers for the Singapore Pools Toto draw on Thursday (26 June) were 10, 26, 28, 35, 37 and 46, with the additional number being 20. One lucky ticket take home the Group 1 prize of over $2,803,451. Singapore Pools says that 54% of sales in each draw are added to the Toto prize pool. Your winnings from the pool is dependent on which prize group you land in after the draw reveals the winning numbers. Prize group Matching numbers Prize Group 1 (Jackpot) 6 winning numbers 38% of prize pool (Minimum guarantee of $1,000,000) Group 2 5 winning numbers + additional number 8% of prize pool Group 3 5 winning numbers 5.5% of prize pool Group 4 4 winning numbers + additional number 3% of prize pool Group 5 4 winning numbers $50 Group 6 3 winning numbers+ additional number $25 Group 7 3 winning numbers $10 The odds of winning the Toto jackpot (6 winning numbers) are one in almost 14 million, according to Singapore Pools. Prize group Matching numbers Odds of winning Group 1 6 winning numbers 1 in 13,983,816 Group 2 5 winning numbers+ additional number 1 in 2,330,636 Group 3 5 winning numbers 1 in 55,491 Group 4 4 winning numbers+ additional number 1 in 22,197 These figures are available on the Singapore Pools website. Singapore Pools has a prize calculator for Toto which you can find here. The Group 1 prize amount will not snowball beyond the fourth consecutive draw. If there is no Group 1 winner at the end of four consecutive draws, the final jackpot amount (38% of the fourth draw's prize pool plus snowballed amount from the three preceding draws) cascades, i.e. it will be paid to the next prize group with winner(s) and shared equally. Prize amounts for Group 2, 3, and 4 will snowball until it is won. Statistics from Singapore Pools includes lottery draws from 9 October 2014 onwards when Toto was updated to the current 6-out-of-49 format. According to their data, the biggest jackpot prize was $19,416,913 which was drawn on 11 February, 2022. The $19.4 million jackpot had eight winning shares which means the winning share amount worked out to over $2.4m each. A nice sum but nowhere close to the biggest winning shares in Toto history which came in at over $13m on two separate occasions. This happened first on 2 October in 2023 when a single winning share took home $13,077,918. In May last year, another lucky individual had the sole winning share of a very cool $13,123,509 jackpot.
Digital Trends
4 hours ago
- Digital Trends
A coding blunder just ruined a moment of joy for lottery winners
Imagine the joy of being notified of a huge lottery win. What would be the first thing you'd do? Get the champagne in? Book a fancy vacation? Call your boss and tell him where to go? And then imagine being informed that the notification had, in fact, been sent in error. Well, you can always send the booze back and cancel the holiday, but trying to convince your boss that you were just joking … well, that may be a bigger challenge. Recommended Videos In an awful turn of events, several thousand people in Norway were told via text messages and push notifications that they'd won 'excessively high' prizes in last Friday's Eurojackpot draw. Except that they hadn't. Norsk Tipping, Norway's state-owned gambling operator, had to contact the winners again to tell them that it had made a terrible mistake after a manual coding error inflated the value of their winning prizes. In a press release shared online, Norsk Tipping explained that it always receives the prize amounts from Germany in euro cents, and then converts them to Norwegian kroner as Norway doesn't use the euro currency. 'It was during this conversion that a manual error was made in the code that is entered into our game engine,' Norsk Tipping said, adding that instead of being divided by 100, the winning amounts had been multiplied by 100. Which means that instead of splashing out on a new car, the winners would, more likely, be able to splash out on a new air freshener for their current vehicle. If they have one. Norsk Tipping said that the process of sending out prizes began at about 3:15 a.m local time, and was confirmed completed at about 4:30 a.m., with SMS and push notifications sent to customers who had consented to receiving such messages. While no payouts were made, Norsk Tipping CEO Tonje Sagstuen deemed the error serious enough for her to quit her post on Saturday. 'I've received many messages from people who had managed to make plans for holidays, buying an apartment or redecorating before they realized that the amount was wrong,' Sagstuen said in comments reported by Euronews. 'To them I can only say: I'm sorry! But I understand that it's little consolation.' The Guardian tracked down one of the winners, a guy called Sveen who teaches at a culinary school in Oslo. He received a message telling him he'd won 1.2 million kroner ($120,000), but it turned out he'd only won a paltry 125 kroner ($12.50). Despite the disappointment, Sveen said he would still celebrate, though he admitted that 'you don't get too much champagne for that money. It's more like a glass of prosecco or crémant than champagne.'
