CLIVE, Iowa — The Iowa Lottery released its latest annual results on Friday, with its sales, proceeds to state causes and prizes to players all meeting, and slightly exceeding, budget projections for fiscal year 2025 despite low jackpot levels overall in signature national lotto games.
“The Iowa Lottery team is proud to deliver on the lottery’s promise to responsibly generate revenue for important state causes, such as the Iowa Veterans Trust Fund,” said Iowa Lottery CEO Matt Strawn. “Thank you to our hard-working team of Iowans, nearly 2,500 retail partners, lottery players, and community stakeholders for contributing to a successful year.”
Strawn noted that while the Iowa Lottery’s annual budget targets for sales and proceeds were exceeded for fiscal year 2025, they trailed the record-breaking sales results of fiscal year 2024 – a year that witnessed a record of five separate lotto game jackpots exceed $1 billion.
The Lottery’s Preliminary Results
The preliminary figures released Friday show that the Iowa Lottery generated $86.1 million in proceeds to state causes in the fiscal year that ended June 30.
Annual lottery sales in FY 2025 totaled $434.9 million, while prizes to players totaled $283.5 million. Lottery sales commissions to the local businesses across the state that sell tickets totaled $28.3 million. All are in the Iowa Lottery’s Top 10 results for those categories.
The unaudited results show that Iowa Lottery sales in FY 2025 were 4.1 percent ahead of budget projections, but down 11.2 percent from the previous year’s record total of $489.9 million. Lottery proceeds to state causes in FY 2025 were 11.8 percent ahead of budget projections, but down 19.3 percent from the previous year, while prizes to players decreased 9.3 percent from FY 2024’s total. Lottery sales commissions to Iowa businesses decreased 11.5 percent from the previous year.
Katie New, chair of the Iowa Lottery Commission, noted multiple positives for the lottery during the year, including annual operating expenses that were below budget projections.
New, the controller at Ellipsis Iowa, also noted that the lottery delivered strong statewide visibility for awareness messages highlighting Problem Gambling Awareness Month and the help available in Iowa for those seeking information about gambling disorders.
“The Iowa Lottery’s ongoing demonstration of integrity and social responsibility carries great impact for me as a citizen Commission member,” New said. “The lottery team’s focus goes beyond the numbers to responsibly produce results.”
The Factors Involved
The lottery’s FY 2025 results reflected two main factors: a slight decrease in scratch-ticket sales, which have always been closely tied to broader external economic factors, and the relative lack of giant jackpots in the Powerball® and Mega Millions® games.
The timing of giant jackpots and when they will occur can’t be predicted. But in FY 2024, the Powerball and Mega Millions jackpots collectively climbed five times to more than $1 billion (three in Powerball and two in Mega Millions). That occurred only once in FY 2025, in Mega Millions. Sales in both games are largely jackpot driven, so FY 2025 sales in Powerball were down 51 percent from the prior year, while Mega Millions annual sales were down 29 percent from the previous year.
Sales of scratch games, the Iowa Lottery’s leading product, were down 4 percent from the previous year and accounted for about 67 percent of the lottery’s overall sales in FY 2025.
That, in turn, had an impact on lottery proceeds. In a year like FY 2025 when scratch tickets sell particularly well, lottery proceeds may be a smaller percentage of total sales because scratch games have a smaller profit margin than lotto games like Powerball. But while sales in lotto games can vary greatly with their jackpots from week to week and month to month, sales of scratch tickets are more stable over time.
