Kentucky Lottery sets new ticket sales record, exceeding $1 billion for first time

The Kentucky Lottery set a new sales record in fiscal year 2017, exceeding $1 billion in a single fiscal year for the first time since it began operating in 1989.

Lottery ticket sales were $1,000,501,000 in the fiscal year that ended June 30, surpassing last year’s record of $997.3 million, the agency announced Wednesday.

That translated into $251.6 million for the state of Kentucky, an increase of 2.5 million over the prior year. Kentucky uses lottery money to fund college scholarship and grant programs.

Scratch-off tickets were the largest game category, producing $603.8 million. That was $6.5 million more than the previous year, according to the Kentucky Lottery.

Keno was the fastest growing game, generating 15 percent more revenue than the previous year. Revenue from Keno was $75.7 million, an increase of $9.8 million.

The new record came despite declining Powerball sales, which dropped 23.6 percent. Kentucky Lottery President and CEO Tom Delacenserie attributed the drop to lower overall jackpots.

“Without anything even remotely close to the $1.6 billion Powerball jackpot we saw in January 2016, sales for that game were down 23.6%,” Delacenserie said. “Despite the $22.3 million decline in sales for just this game, the fact that we not only broke our all-time sales record but also the billion threshold is remarkable.”

This story was originally published July 5, 2017 at 12:15 PM with the headline "Kentucky Lottery sets new ticket sales record, exceeding $1 billion for first time."