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Published / game-specific
A current rule or operator figure directly tied to the game or allocation being shown.
Lottery Money Research • Interactive Comparison
Put major lotteries side by side and see how ticket sales are divided between prizes, Good Causes or public programs, tax, retailers, operating costs and other uses. Where a detailed split is not publicly available, the tool shows that gap instead of guessing.
Interactive side-by-side tool
Choose two lotteries and enter any sales amount. The money values scale instantly. For percentages expressed as “over”, “less than”, “average” or “derived”, the same label is carried into the result.
The full comparison
This table is deliberately more nuanced than a simple league table. Read the basis and unresolved columns alongside the headline percentages.
| Lottery / dataset | Prizes | Good Causes / public benefit | Duty / tax | Retailer | Operating / profit | Unresolved / combined | Basis |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| UK National Lottery — FY2024/25 actual | 55% | 23% | 12% | 3% | — | 7% costs + profit | Portfolio actual |
| UK National Lottery — Fourth Licence illustration | 56% | 23% | 12% | 3% | 5% costs + 1% profit | — | Illustrative average |
| EuroMillions UK | 43.92% derived | Not separately published | 12% | Not separately published | Not separately published | 44.08% | Game + derived |
| UK Powerball — retail line | 41.2% avg | >30% | 12% | 5% | Within remaining balance | <11.8% | Mixed basis |
| U.S. Powerball | 50% | 35% avg | Jurisdiction-specific | Within local balance | Within local balance | 15% derived | Official avg + derived |
| Mega Millions | 50% | Jurisdiction-dependent | Jurisdiction-dependent | Jurisdiction-dependent | Jurisdiction-dependent | 50% jurisdiction-managed | Top-level game split |
| People's Postcode Lottery | 40% | 31% | No National Lottery Duty | Within operating model | 29% operating expenses | — | Current allocation |
| The Health Lottery — all games | 34% | 20% | No National Lottery Duty | Within operating model | 46% stated expenses | — | Operator-wide |
How to read the labels
A current rule or operator figure directly tied to the game or allocation being shown.
A completed-year result across a whole lottery portfolio rather than one individual game.
A forward-looking or licence-average model such as the government's Fourth Licence £1 illustration.
MLL arithmetic from published inputs, or a bucket whose detailed destination changes by jurisdiction.
What jumps out from the data
The whole UK National Lottery portfolio paid roughly 55p per £1 as prizes in FY2024/25.
Its average prize payout is lower than U.S. Powerball's 50%, while more than 30% is expected to return to UK Good Causes.
The compulsory Millionaire Maker component pulls the combined prize allocation below the headline 50% main-game rate.
On average, 35% of a $2 ticket stays in the selling jurisdiction to support public programs and services.
People's Postcode Lottery currently directs 31% of each ticket cost to the Postcode Trust promoting the draw.
If a game does not publish a separate retailer or Good Causes percentage, that does not mean the category receives nothing.
Go deeper into each part of the ticket
This tool is the comparison layer. The pages below explain the individual money flows, accounting rules and exceptions in detail.
Frequently asked questions
Click a question to reveal the answer.
It depends on the measurement basis. This tool keeps game-level, portfolio-level and operator-wide figures labelled separately. For example, the UK National Lottery actually paid 55% of portfolio sales as prizes in FY2024/25, while U.S. Powerball and Mega Millions each use a 50% game-level prize-funding figure.
Because not every lottery publishes the same accounting buckets. Where a game publishes prizes but does not publish a clean game-specific split for Good Causes, retailers, costs and profit, the tool keeps the remainder combined instead of inventing a detailed breakdown.
A UK £2.50 purchase contains £1.74 for EuroMillions and 76p for UK Millionaire Maker. The current licence allocates 50% of the £1.74 component to the EuroMillions prize fund and 30% of the 76p component to Millionaire Maker prizes. Together that equals £1.098, or 43.92% of the full £2.50 purchase.
Allwyn's current public commitment says over 30% of the ticket price will be returned to UK Good Causes. The tool therefore uses 30% only as a lower-bound visual and labels it 'over 30%' rather than converting it into an exact figure.
Powerball publishes 50% prize funding and says 35% of each $2 ticket stays in the selling jurisdiction on average to support public programs and services. The 15% is simply the arithmetic remainder. MLL labels it as derived and does not call it operator profit.
Mega Millions is sold by participating lotteries, and the detailed economics differ by jurisdiction. The game publishes a 50% prize share, but a single game-specific national split of the remaining half between beneficiaries, retailers and operations is not available.
No. Both are public-benefit uses of lottery proceeds, but they sit in different legal systems. The UK National Lottery has a statutory Good Causes structure, while U.S. beneficiary programs are set by each state or jurisdiction.
No. Commission is revenue paid to the retailer for lottery-related activity. The retailer still has its own staffing, premises, administration and other operating costs.
No. The government's Fourth Licence illustration separates approximately 5p per £1 for operating costs from 1p for operator profit. The latest actual Gambling Commission table, however, publishes the two together as a 7p costs-and-profit bucket.
No. It models how a block of ticket sales is allocated across the lottery system. Prize percentages are pooled across many players and draws; an individual player can receive nothing, a small prize or a very large prize.
They answer different questions. FY2024/25 shows what actually happened in one completed financial year, while the Fourth Licence illustration shows the government's expected average allocation across the licence.
No. The 12% Lottery Duty applies to UK National Lottery stakes. U.S. lottery economics and statutory beneficiary transfers operate under different federal and state structures.
Only with care. They are society-lottery structures rather than the National Lottery, and their legal and tax frameworks differ. Their published percentages are useful for comparison, but the labels on the tool should be read alongside the numbers.
Whenever a game licence, ticket price, statutory duty, operator allocation or lottery rule changes. MLL records the research date on this page because several of these figures can change over time.
Primary research
Figures were checked against current regulator, government and lottery-operator sources on 16 August 2026. The comparison deliberately keeps different accounting bases visible.