New York lottery players didn't win big jackpot but state pocketed $60M

New York State's lottery players who failed to win that recent billion-dollar multistate Mega Millions jackpot at least have the consolation of knowing they raised $60.3 million for public schools, while the ticket-selling shops reaped $10.3 million, gaming officials said Monday.

A total of $172.4 million was spent on tickets in New York State for the 26 drawings that started in October before the number for the winning ticket -- bought in Maine -- was drawn Jan. 13 for the record $1.35 billion jackpot.

“As the numbers show, the New York Lottery provides entertainment for millions of responsible New Yorkers and delivers real money for public schools and small businesses across the state,” New York State Gaming Commission Chairman Brian O’Dwyer said in a statement.

Lottery sales have rebounded, rising 20.5% in fiscal 2022, from the previous period, mainly because the pandemic forced video lottery terminals to close for around half a year, starting in March 2020, it said.

The $1.35 billion Mega Millions jackpot was the third one to surpass $1 billion in the last year. 

And it was the fourth-largest lottery prize in this country.

The largest Mega Millions jackpot in October 2018 was $1.53 billion claimed by a single ticket holder in South Carolina.

New Yorkers did not entirely miss out, however.

On Long Island, a $1 million second-prize ticket was sold at the ShopRite store on Old Country Road in Plainview, according to the New York Lottery.

Other $1 million tickets were sold in Manhattan, Long Island City and Newburgh.

And last week, one winning $20 million Mega Millions ticket was sold in the Bronx. 

Public schools in Nassau, Suffolk and New York City receive some of the largest amounts of funding from the state lottery, which is divided among them according to the same statutory formula used for other state education aid.

This calculation, the state says, "takes into account both a school district's size and its income level; larger, lower-income school districts receive proportionately larger shares of lottery school funding."

Nassau's share amounted to nearly $173 million in the last fiscal year, topped by Suffolk's $270 million and New York City's $1.26 billion.

Adam Hoffer, director of excise tax policy at the Tax Foundation, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit, said survey data shows that roughly half of Americans play lotteries. He said people in every income group play, but the heaviest concentration of lottery purchases comes from a middle group of people making between about $40,000 and $90,000 a year.

Lower-income households spend less in total on lottery tickets, but what they do spend represents a higher percentage of their income than other income groups, Hoffer said.

With The Associated Press