Texas lottery hits $5bn in annual sales

nisers of the The Texas state lottery have revealed that sales in 2017 have reached a record $5.077 billion.

Players won $3.3 billion in prizes, whilst $1.334 billion was raised for Texas schools and veterans. The Texas Lottery is operated by the Texas Lottery Commission.

In a statement announcing the companies results, Gary Grief, executive director of the Texas Lottery said: "This is the seventh consecutive year that the Texas Lottery has reached record sales. Due to the amazing work of our staff, retailers and our trusted vendor partners, the Texas Lottery was able to offset the lack of record jackpots with record-setting scratch ticket sales, which led to outstanding sales and revenue results."

2016 saw a Powerball prize of $1.6bn attracting huge amounts of publicity and sales. Despite 2017 not offering the same record breaking prize, the Texas state lottery was able to generate $5.077 billion in sales for the fiscal year of 2017. The high revenue was driven by record number of scratch card sales which reached $3.94 billion, rising by $219.4 million from the previous years total.

J. Winston Krause, chairman of the Texas Lottery Commission said:"I am very proud of the significant support we continue to provide for Texas education and veterans. I want to commend Texas Lottery employees, retailers and vendors for once again doing an outstanding job of developing, managing and marketing our portfolio of scratch tickets and draw games."

In the last five years alone the lottery has grown by 21% as a result of an $890m increase in sales.