How Much Money Goes Unclaimed in State Lottery Winnings Every Year?

You’re standing in line at the 7-11 behind a transient who probably lives behind the store and is taking forever to accomplish his purchase. You are there only to grab a Gatorade and a Snickers bar but as you are standing in line your eyes glance over at the scratch off lottery tickets which are prominently displayed. “Screw it!” you think to yourself. “Maybe I’ll grab one and this will be my lucky day”.

But of course, it’s not your lucky day because state run lotteries are basically a rip-off. You basically have no chance to win anything substantial and if you do win anything it’s usually a few bucks. Just enough to keep you coming back into the store and buying more stuff. After all, that’s one main reason convivence stores don’t mind the hassle and headache of hosting lottery games. They get foot traffic.

Scratch off games in particular can be quite complex. This makes it easy for the purchaser to not realize that they’ve won a prize. Or, since it’s only a few bucks, they decide they’ll cash it in at a later date. But they forget all about the ticket and it expires or gets thrown away. These uncashed smaller prize tickets make up the vast majority of the unclaimed money every year.

According to economics professor Victor Matheson, roughly 1% of winnings go unclaimed and since state lottery sales are about $100B combined annually, that means $1B goes unclaimed nationwide. One 2017 analysis (from a lottery app developer aggregating state commission data) put it at about $2.89 billion for a 12-month period.

The state of Michigan leads the way in this department, claiming that around $78M went unclaimed in 2024 alone. California is right behind with a cool $50M left sitting on the table. New York is in the tens of millions annually and surprisingly, the relatively small state of South Carolina had $30M in unclaimed winnings.

These stats and figures are for both lotto number tickets and scratch-offs combined. Unclaimed prizes typically revert to the state’s lottery fund after the claim period expires (usually 90 days to 1 year, varying by state and game). Most use their lottery revenue to fund schools and scholarships (so they say) while other simply add them to prize pool s for future games or draws.