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BOSTON (State House News Service) — November was a good month for Massachusetts Lottery players.
Roughly 80 percent (79.78 percent to be exact) of the money the Lottery took in for its scratch tickets, draw games and more last month was returned to players as winnings — the greatest share returned to players for any month in recent history, Executive Director Mark William Bracken said Tuesday.
"We have been trying to go back and we have not yet found a month that had a higher prize payout," he told the Lottery Commission.
A chart in Bracken's presentation to the Lottery Commission on Tuesday showed the Lottery's fiscal year-to-date prize payout percentage was 72.6 percent after October, the lowest for that point in the calendar of any fiscal year since at least fiscal 2019. By the end of November, it climbed to 74.1 percent and stood as the highest for that point in the calendar of any of the five most recent fiscal years.
"We went from having the lowest prize payout to having the highest," Bracken said. "Good for the players."
Bracken told the commission that two big jackpot prizes in particular -- claimed on the same day in late November -- fueled last month's surge in the prize payout percentage. One was one of three $25 million grand prizes from the Lottery's new $50 scratch ticket and the other was an $11 million or $12 million Megabucks jackpot that had been hit in a September drawing.
"So those two combined added 30-something million dollars in payouts we normally wouldn't see, because those are kind of one-time hits," he said.
December could also wind up having a high payout percentage, Bracken said, because the third and final $25 million grand prize from the "Billion Dollar Extravaganza" ticket was claimed on Dec. 1.
At $556.1 million, the Lottery's November sales were down $41.8 million or 7 percent compared to November 2022. Dragging things down the most was Powerball, which sold $48.1 million less than it did when there was a record high jackpot of $2.04 billion in November 2022.
The drop in sales combined with a huge increase in the amount of scratch ticket winnings that were claimed last month ($78.4 last month compared to $11 million in November 2022) to lead the Lottery to post an estimated profit of $73.8 million last month -- a $47.7 million decrease from November 2022.
Through five months of fiscal year 2024, Lottery sales of $2.68 billion are up $130.8 million or 5.1 percent over this same point in fiscal year 2023. But the Lottery's estimated profit, which Beacon Hill eventually divides up among the 351 cities and towns in Massachusetts, of $486.1 million trails last year's mark by $13.7 million. The Lottery last fiscal year returned a record profit of $1.194 billion and Treasurer Deborah Goldberg forecast a profit of $1 billion this fiscal year.
"We're still optimistic we will hit our $1 billion mark that we said," Bracken said Tuesday. "The question is, will we have another net profit record, because we have a lot of high-prize winners coming in the door this fiscal year."
While the talk at Tuesday's meeting focused on winners, profits and prize payouts, most Lottery tickets lose and the odds of winning are relatively low and posted deep within the agency's website under the "how to win" tab within each individual game.
Written by Colin A. Young/SHNS
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