State Lotteries

Below you will find a list of all of the state lotteries and their associated websites.

History of Lottery in the United States

Lotteries have been legal in the United States since the early 17th century. Before there existance of state sponsored lottery, many lotteries existed despite being illegal. For example, Peter H. Matthews operated a Numbers Game in New York city which was often limited to poorer neighborhoods where people would attempt to guess numbers drawn randomly the next day. The first modern state sanctioned lottery was established in Puerto Rico in 1934 followed later in the century by New Hampshire in 1964. Today however, lotteries run in 42 states. Recently Arkansas voted in 2008 to approve a state level lottery.

Interstate Lotteries Arise

The first modern lottery involving multiple states was formed in 1985 combining Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont. The Mult-State Lottery Association was formed in 1988 was then formed with Missouri, Oregon, Kansas, Iowa, Rhode Island, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia as its initial members. This group is best known for its Powerball lottery which builds up very large jackpots. In 2006, a single ticket won a prize of $340 million dollars shared by eight people at a meatpacking facility. They decided to receive their winnings as a lump sum of $177,270,519.67. The Mega Millions game was formed in 1996 with 6 member states: Georgia, Illinois, Massachusetts, Maryland, Michigan, and Virginia. This lottery was later joined by 7 other states to bring it to a total of 13, the largest interstate lottery in the country. Scratch instant lottery tickets were introduced in the 1970s and have since become a major source of state lottery revenues.

Online Lotteries

As the internet has evolved it is now possible to play lottery type games online. Often for free or replaced by performing some other beneficial action to make up for the prizes offered. Two of the many websites which offer free games (after registration) include iwinweekly.com and the larger iWon.com. According to their website they administers 30% of the worldwide online and instant lottery business.

iWon

Online gaming rules generally being strict, “lottery” type games face less scrutiny. Naturally this has cause an increase in traffic to websites offering lottery purchase services, charging a premium on the base price to participate.

Public Benefit to Lotteries

Currently, lotteries in the united states donate large amounts of their profits to the educations. Unfortunately these funds usually end up being used as an excuse to lower state funding instead of supplementing it.