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Pennsylvania Lottery Scores Record Shattering $5.3B Sales & 1.3B Profit
By Jeff Osienya Aug 05, 2021 IndustryThe Keystone State Lottery crushes previous records for sales and profit as it marks the 10th consecutive year of allocating $1 billion+ to senior citizen support programs. PA’s Lottery has also announced the introduction of a new weekly Powerball draw.On Tuesday, August 3rd, Pennsylvania Lottery officials announced that the state Lottery managed to generate a record-smashing profit of over $1.3 billion during the 2020-21 fiscal year. The massive profit was amassed from record Lottery sales of more than $5.3 billion in Draw Games like the famed Mega Millions and Powerball and traditional lotto games such as Scratch-Off tickets. Further, the Keystone State Lottery also achieved a new best-ever milestone for online sales after bringing in $887 million from online players.
As is the norm, the profits collected by the PA Lottery are channeled towards the support of senior programs such as rent refunds and property tax, reduced and free transport fare, low-cost prescriptions, meal delivery to homes and senior centers, and much more. With another 10-figure profit on the books, this is the 10th successive year that the Pennsylvania Lottery has brought in over a billion dollars for older Pennsylvanians.
After reporting the stellar performance of the 2020-21 fiscal year, the Pennsylvania Lottery Executive Director Drew Svitko shared a few words saying:
Quote“We are extremely proud that we kept funds flowing to programs that benefit older Pennsylvanians during a year when many sorely needed this assistance. Our team is very passionate about our mission of responsibly generating funds for our commonwealth’s older residents. We are hard at work to make sure that we keep this momentum going and build on this success.”
Crunching the Pennsylvania Lottery Numbers
The Keystone State Lottery officials also issued a comprehensive revenue breakdown of the 2020-21 fiscal year that ended on June 30th. Predictably, Scratch-Offs lead the lotto products after bringing in 71% or $3.8 billion of the total lottery sales. That is a 17% jump compared to the 3.2 billion sales seen from Scratch-Offs over the 2019-20 fiscal year.
Draw Games, including the Powerball and Mega Millions, on the other hand, accounted for 25% of the sales, or $1.23 billion. Rounding off the top three products for the PA Lottery was the Pick 3 game with $305 million in sales, 5% of the combined revenue.
Per the report of the Pennsylvania Lottery, the jackpot figures of Powerball and Mega Millions draws were the driving factors behind the two products. For instance, in January 2021, the potential jackpot payout for the Mega Millions draw had climbed to nearly 850 million. However, the lucky winner who ended up bagging the Mega Millions jackpot was a Bucks County resident who scooped $516 million later in May.
As you already know, online sales also had a shining success to the point of blowing past previous records after bringing in $156 million more than the 2019-2020 online sales revenue. Taking the spotlight back to winners of the PA Lottery, the state paid out 97 tickets to winners who had nabbed prizes of $1 million or higher. As for retailers, they accrued a total of $329 million, 71 million more than what they won from the previous fiscal year.
PA Lottery to Introduce a 3rd Powerball Weekly Drawing
As he reported the historic sales and profits for the PA Lottery, Svitko also disclosed that the Powerball product would launch a third weekly drawing for Mondays, starting August 23rd. The new addition will join the weekly schedule for the draws held every Wednesday and Saturday. When announcing the new Monday weekly drawing, Svitko added that:
Quote“This change will help us give our players exactly what they’ve told us they want — larger, faster-growing jackpots. We’re also reminding our players that every ticket sold helps us generate money for the senior programs that older Pennsylvanians rely upon each and every day.”
The new high recorded by PA Lottery surpassed the previous best set in the 2018-19 fiscal year, a period in which the state generated $1.1 billion in profits from a total of $4.5 billion in sales. And since the inception of the PA Lottery, more than $31 billion has been allocated to different senior programs in the Keystone State.
Having one of the largest state lotteries, Pennsylvania is the only US state where all the proceeds are devoted to programs that benefit senior citizens. With over $5.3 billion in sales for the 2020-21 fiscal year, the only other state lotteries that sell more lotto tickets annually are California, Texas, Florida, and New York.
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