Lottery In Massachusetts

Massachusetts legalized the lottery in 1971 when they enacted legislation in order to provide a source of aid for all of the cities and towns in the state. Since its creation the lottery has generated over $131 billion, awarded $91 billion in prizes, and given over $28 billion to the Commonwealth for local aid, on top of this the state offers bonuses to local retailers and a massive $7.5 billion has been paid out to local businesses.

Legal Lottery Options in Massachusetts

There are over 8,300 retailers that sell tickets in the state of Massachusetts currently, you can find your nearest lottery agent with the Location Finder tool on the Official Mass Lottery website.

You can also purchase season tickets for various popular lottery games with the website or via phone. However, you aren’t able to purchase tickets for draws or games via the website or mobile app.

Powerball

This is the most popular lottery in the United States and you can play it from Massachusetts to try and win a minimum jackpot of $20,000,000 that regularly gets into the hundreds of millions.

Tickets are $2 and winners are drawn every Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday. You’ll also have the option to include the power play starting at an extra $1, this multiplies your non-jackpots wins by up to x10.

Mega Millions

Mega Millions is another multi-state lottery draw that offers some massive prizes, for $2 you can pick five numbers between 1 and 70 as well as a Mega Ball between 1 and 25. Match these up and you’ll win at least $40 million. Winners are drawn every Tuesday and Friday night.

Lucky For Life

This is a daily draw game that gives you the chance to win $1,000 a day for the rest of your life or just take the money as a lump sum. Tickets cost $2 and you’ll need to pick fives numbers between 1 and 48 as well as one Lucky Ball number from 1 to 18. You can also get a chunky second place prize with annual checks of $25,000 sent to you for your life.

Mass Cash

This state lottery gives you some better odds of winning because there are fewer numbers. You choose five picks from 1-35 and if you win you’ll get up to $100,000. Another good thing about this local draw is that tickets are half the price of major multi-state draws, with a price point of $1.

Other Draw Games

Massachusetts goes above and beyond when it comes to creating new games. So you will have access to games before they are adopted across the country quite often in the state.

Some other popular games include:

• The Numbers Game
• Mega Bucks Doubler
• Keno
• All or Nothing

Instant Games, Pull Tabs, and Charity Games

It’s not just Draw Games that the lottery provides in Massachusetts, you can also pick up plenty of different instant win type games from the retail lottery sales points across the state. There are pull-tab games, instant win tickets that range from $1 to $30 and can see you win up to $10,000,000.

Plus there are various charitable games available that raise funds for great causes in Massachusetts. You can play bingo, enjoy casino nights, play charity pull-tab games or just join in with a good old-fashioned raffle.

Massachusetts State Lottery History

• 1971 – Legislation is created that will allow Massachusetts to have a state lottery to raise funds for local aid.
• 1972 – The Massachusetts lottery sells its first tickets on March 22 with the first draw to go ahead on April 6th. Seven lucky winners would claim $50,000 at this opening event.
• 1974 – Massachusetts is the first state to sell instant tickets with a top prize of $10,000 offered.
• 1991 – Mass Cash is introduced with a top prize of $100,000.
• 1999– A Big Game ticket is sold in Boston and the winner received a $197 million jackpot, making this the largest lottery win in Massachusetts.
• 2017 – The lottery launches its mobile application.
• 2017 – A Powerball ticket sold in Chicopee ends up winning $758.7 million.
• 2019 – The lottery returns a record $1.104 billion to the Commonwealth.
• 2020 – Lottery players can now use the mobile app to scan tickets and determine if they are winners or not.

What Does the Massachusetts State Lottery Fund?

The lottery returns net profits to the Commonwealth for the distribution of essential aid across all of the 351 cities and towns within state lines.

The funds are not for anything specific, which means each city and town can choose for themselves how the funds can be best used. Some places use the extra funding for public safety staffing, snow removal, road improvements, school services, programs for senior citizens, and parks and recreation projects.

If you want to find out more about how much funding your city or town received from the lottery, you can find out more using the Support Communities page of the Massachusetts lottery website.

Where Can You Play the Lottery in Massachusetts?

Currently, you can only purchase regular lottery tickets and scratch-offs at the various retail locations found across the state. The website, although having some very worthwhile features for lottery players doesn’t allow the purchase of tickets as such.

There is one exception to this though, you can purchase season tickets, these are available via the website or over the phone and allow you to play games like Mass Cash, Mega Millions, Megabucks, Powerball, and Lucky For Life without having to go to retail locations.

Ciaran McEneaney

Ciaran has been working within the Gambling Industry as a deep analyst since 2019. His deep knowledge and understanding of all the gambling regulations, and processes makes him a true asset, and an always valuable point of view for Gambling Industry News, allowing us to cover every topics from a brand new perspective.