Pennsylvania Lottery generates more than $1B to benefit PA seniors

WILKES-BARRE — Pennsylvania Lottery Executive Director Drew Svitko Monday said although many challengers were faced this fiscal year, the Lottery had another successful year, generating more than $1 billion in profit for vital programs that older Pennsylvanians rely on throughout the commonwealth.

Svitko said the Pennsylvania Lottery generated $1.14 billion to benefit older Pennsylvanians during the 2019-20 fiscal year — the ninth consecutive year the Lottery generated more than $1 billion for programs that benefit older Pennsylvanians.

“The support of our players, our business partners and the entire Lottery team made this possible,: Svitko said. “We take great pride in the fact that we are the only Lottery in the U.S. that dedicates all of its proceeds to benefit older adults. We are already hard at work looking for new and innovative ways to continue responsibly growing our business to support our older residents.”

The Lottery sold nearly $4.47 billion in its traditional games, which include Scratch-Off, Draw and Monitor Games. While Scratch-Off ticket sales alone grew more than 7 percent from the previous fiscal year, overall traditional game sales were down by more than $33.8 million, or 0.75 percent, from the prior fiscal year.

Meanwhile, the Lottery recorded $731 million in online play, an increase of $349.8 million, or nearly 92 percent, from the prior fiscal year.

Here are some other overall highlights from the fiscal year that ran from July 1, 2019 to June 30, 2020:

• Traditional game prizes paid to winners grew to a record of more than $2.9 billion, an increase of nearly $481,000. A total of 79 winning tickets of $1 million or more were paid to players during the fiscal year.

• Sales of Scratch-Off games totaled a record of more than $3.2 billion, up by $213.5 million, or over 7 percent, from the previous year and surpassing the previous record of $2.9 billion in 2018-19. These games account for close to 72 percent of total sales.

• Sales of Draw Games – including the PICK family of games and Wild Ball, Treasure Hunt, Cash 5, Match 6 Lotto, Millionaire Raffle, Cash4Life®, Powerball®, and Mega Millions® – totaled more than $1.1 billion for the fiscal year, a decrease of $253.8 million, or 18.6 percent, from the previous year’s total. Unlike the 2018-19 fiscal year, when there were several large Powerball® and Mega Millions® jackpots, there were no record jackpots in multi-state games to drive sales last fiscal year.

• More than $639 million in prizes were paid out to iLottery winners, in addition to a $1 million Mega Millions® prize that was awarded to a player who bought a Mega Millions ticket on pailottery.com. ​​​​​​​

• Sales of Monitor Games, which include Keno and Xpress Sports games, totaled an estimated $53.7 million this fiscal year, an increase of almost $7 million, or 15 percent, from the previous fiscal year.

• More than 10,000 licensed Lottery retailers statewide, many of them small and family-owned businesses, earned an estimated $257 million in sales commissions.

The Pennsylvania Lottery operates as a bureau within the Pennsylvania Department of Revenue. Financial statements are available at palottery.com, under Annual Sales & Benefit Reports.