Hoosier Lottery ticket sales totaled $1.6 billion between July 1, 2024 and June 30, 2025, a nearly 8% decline compared to the prior state budget year. Image from Hoosier Lottery
The $1.3 billion Powerball jackpot for Wednesday night's drawing has lottery ticket machines across Indiana spitting out numbers nearly nonstop as Hoosiers waiting in line dream of everything they could do with all that money.
Meanwhile, Hoosier Lottery officials are keeping their eyes on a different set of numbers, and hoping for perhaps a few more Powerball rollovers, after learning last month that Indiana lottery ticket sales declined $138 million, or nearly 8%, during the 12-month period ending June 30.
"We didn't have the year we had hoped for," said Chuck Taylor, Hoosier Lottery director of legal affairs and compliance, during the Aug. 19 meeting of the State Lottery Commission of Indiana.
One reason for the decline was a lackluster $376 million in ticket sales for multi-state draw games like Powerball and MegaMillions due to the relative scarcity of billion-dollar jackpots — just one during the 2025 state budget year compared to five jackpots topping $1 billion in 2024.
"We've had just abysmal jackpot activity," said Andrew Hill, director of marketing analytics and sales development at Rhode Island-based Brightstar, whose Brightstar Indiana subsidiary (formerly IGT Indiana) manages sales and marketing for the Hoosier Lottery.
Though data shows the $1.2 billion in Hoosier Lottery scratch-off ticket sales also dropped by a total of $49.7 million, or 3.9%, on a year-over-year basis, with fewer scratch tickets sold at every price point except for $30 and $50.
Hill said Brightstar research found players are spending less on lottery tickets compared to five years ago because of higher prices for retail goods and less discretionary income, along with dwindling savings and soaring credit card interest rates.
"People feel that they just have a little less cash in their pocket than they did before," Hill said. "That's just overall hurting the lottery industry."
Nevertheless, Taylor said the consistent performance of Hoosier Lotto and non-jackpot draw games, such as Daily 3 and Daily 4, along with slight growth in Cash Pop and Fast Play, makes him optimistic about the lottery's outlook for the 2026 state budget year.
"We are looking at the products that did well and how we can grow those areas. There's opportunities for growth," Taylor said.
Indeed, the $1.6 billion in total ticket sales for 2025 is roughly where Hoosier Lottery revenue would have been with steady growth since 2020, data show.
The COVID-19 pandemic, however, sent lottery ticket sales soaring as Hoosiers had few other entertainment options during that period on which to spend stimulus or other extra cash — leading to consecutive annual revenue declines as players' lottery habits return to normal.
The state of Indiana remains the lottery's biggest winner. It received $341.3 million in Hoosier Lottery profits for 2025, a 9.1% decrease from the annual record of $375.5 million set in 2021, but still up 12% from the $304.6 million the lottery transferred to the state in 2020.
The bulk of that money is used to reduce the annual excise tax paid by motor vehicle owners, while $60 million is earmarked for police, firefighter and teacher pensions, records show.
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