Mass. lottery sales down after record-setting year

Massachusetts Lottery sales ended fiscal year 2025 down about 3% and the estimated profit it generated was 8% lower than the year before, while players enjoyed the highest prize payout percentage on record.

Treasurer Deborah Goldberg, who oversees the Lottery, said she was proud of the results "as we continue to face an ever evolving and changing industry." In the last 10 years, the Lottery has gained legal competition from casino gambling, fantasy sports and online sports betting. It is preparing itself to move into the online realm next year, a long-sought authority that Goldberg has said is essential to continue generating more than $1 billion a year for the Legislature to divide up among the state's 351 cities and towns.

The estimated $1.065 billion in net profit the Lottery generated from July 2024 through June 2025 just beat Treasurer Deborah Goldberg's projection for a $1.05 billion return, but fell short of the $1.159 billion profit produced in fiscal 2024. The Lottery's revenue ended the year at an estimated $5.962 billion, about $207 million less than the record-setting $6.168 billion revenue in fiscal 2024.

"Thanks to our customers, employees, and statewide retail partners, for the fifth year in a row we are delivering over $1 billion to our cities and towns," Lottery Executive Director Mark William Bracken said. "Record-setting Keno sales helped offset the significant drop in Powerball and Mega Millions sales that lotteries across the country have experienced due to a lack of large jackpots. Massachusetts continues to offer one of the strongest portfolios of games available to players, and our record-setting prize payout percentage underscores that player success is at the heart of our operations."

The Lottery said the multistate jackpot-driven games Powerball and Mega Millions were "responsible for over 75 percent of the decrease in sales" last fiscal year. During fiscal 2025, those two games produced only one jackpot larger than $1 billion (Mega Millions hit $1.22 billion in December 2024) compared to five $1 billion-plus jackpots during fiscal 2024.

Powerball sales of about $90 million in fiscal 2025 were down $121.1 million from fiscal 2024 (about 57%), while Mega Millions sales of about $108 million were down $36.4 million (about 25%).

Keno, which the Lottery has focused on expanding and promoting in recent years, set a record with more than $1.285 billion in sales last year, up about 2.7% over fiscal 2024. The game accounted for almost 22% of all Lottery sales last year, up from 20.4% a year earlier.

Scratch ticket sales, which make up about two-thirds of all Lottery sales, totaled $3.956 billion in fiscal 2025, a 1.4% drop compared to fiscal 2024.

Lottery players won an estimated $4.416 billion in prizes in fiscal 2025, and the Lottery said the 74.07% prize payout percentage (the share of revenue that is paid back out as winnings) was up from 73.37% in fiscal 2024 and represents the highest prize payout rate in the Lottery's history.

The Lottery can establish specific prize payout percentages for some individual games, but the annual prize payouts fluctuate from year to year based on when players actually claim their prizes.

Players won 159 prizes of $1 million or more last year — 148 on scratch tickets, six from Powerball, two on Mega Millions, and three from Megabucks. The largest prize won was a $1-million-a-year-for-life prize on a $50 scratch ticket. Others included three $15 million prizes, four $10 million prizes, one $5 million prize, and twelve $4 million prizes.

The Lottery's retailers earned $340.7 million in commissions and bonuses based on the winning tickets they sold in fiscal 2025, down about 2.84% from fiscal 2024's record of $350.7 million.

The Lottery's fiscal 2025 financials have not yet been audited, but officials said they are not expected to change dramatically between now and the time an audit is complete by the end of September. Administrative costs equaled about 2.3% of revenues, the Lottery said.

The announcement of fiscal 2025 financials also included an update on the use of the Lottery's mobile cashing feature on its app. Using a smartphone, customers can claim prizes of $601 to $5,000 and receive their winnings electronically deposited to a bank account.

From its launch in September 2021 through June 2025, the Lottery has processed 168,677 mobile transactions totaling about $228 million, officials said. The Lottery said those mobile transactions have saved customers more than $1.1 million in gasoline costs and facilitated a 6.6 million pound reduction in carbon emissions through the elimination of vehicle trips to Lottery claim centers.

Since it sold the first ticket in 1972, the Lottery says it has generated more than $161 billion in revenue, paid out more than $114 billion in prizes, returned more than $34 billion in profit for the state to use as unrestricted local aid, and paid more than $9.2 billion in commissions and bonuses to its retailers.