(Seven states – Alabama, Alaska, Hawaii, Mississippi, Nevada, Utah and Wyoming – don't have lotteries.) Maryland, Iowa and North Dakota spend more than 15 cents of every dollar of lottery revenue on administrative costs. Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania and New Jersey spend less than 3 cents. On average, about 5 cents of the money states collect from your lottery ticket go to pay for administering the game. Some states spend much more than others on operating costs. Other low payout states include Delaware (22 cents), South Dakota (22 cents), Oregon (24 cents) and Rhode Island (28 cents). West Virginia, which took in $720 million in lottery revenues in fiscal 2013, paid out just $116 million in prizes – or about 16 cents of every dollar. On average, that works out to about 62 cents in prizes for every dollar the states take in from lottery revenues.īut not all states are as generous with their payouts as others. That year, after paying out nearly $39 billion in prizes, and $3.2 billion on operating expenses, states collected some $20 billion in proceeds to fund a long list of programs and services, from education to social services. was founded, but since the modern era of government games in the 1960s, they've become a multibillion-dollar enterprise, taking in nearly $62 billion in sales in the 2013 fiscal year, according to the latest available Census data. State-run lotteries have been around since the U.S.
