The Pennsylvania Lottery has revealed it has successfully navigated the COVID-landscape having posted over $1bn in profits for the ninth consecutive year.
The profits, which will support programs that benefit senior citizens, totalled roughly $1.14bn and despite falling $1.4m shy of last year’s haul, still was enough to become the second-best profit-making year in the lottery’s 48-year history.
As well as providing funding for senior citizen support programmes, proceeds from the lottery go toward paying property tax and rent rebates, transportation and prescription assistance for older Pennsylvanians.
Lottery executive director Drew Svitko commented: “Although we faced many challenges this fiscal year, we are thrilled the lottery had another successful year in which we generated over $1bn in profit for the vital programs that older Pennsylvanians rely on throughout the commonwealth.
“The support of our players, our business partners and the entire lottery team made this possible. We take great pride in the fact that we are the only lottery in the US 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 sales of scratch-off game tickets proved to be a majority contributor for the organisation, with the vertical alone recording ticket sales of over $3.2bn, a 7% increase on the previous year which also breaks the 2018-19 record of $2.9bn in 2018-19.
More worryingly the overall total sale of scratch-off tickets, along with tickets sold for draw games and monitor games, was down by roughly $33.8m when compared with last year.
However, the introduction of online games did aid the lottery in making up the difference as it generated revenues of $731m in online play, an 92% increase of $349.8m from the prior fiscal year.
