Pa. Lottery Raises Over $1 Billion for Senior Programs -- Not Quite a Record Year

The Pennsylvania Lottery has raised $1.14 billion in profits this year to underwrite programs for seniors, reports the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette . This amount fell short of last year's record-breaking profits, but marked the second-best profit-making year in nearly half a century. Proceeds are channeled to pay property tax and rent rebates, transportation and prescription aid for older residents, and to fund area agencies on aging. Sales of scratch-off game tickets from July 1, 2019, through June 30 were a major contributor, which alone had record ticket sales of more than $3.2 billion last year — compared to $213.5 million from the previous year and $2.9 billion in 2018-2019. Yet overall scratch-off ticket sales, as well as tickets sold for draw games and monitor games, totaled almost $4.47 billion, which was down by more than $33.8 million from the prior fiscal year. Still, the launch of online games over a year ago helped to partly offset that difference. "We take great pride in the fact that we are the only lottery in the U.S. that dedicates all of its proceeds to benefit older adults," said Pennsylvania Lottery Executive Director Drew Svitko. "We are already hard at work looking for new and innovative ways to continue responsibly growing our business to support our older residents."