How Much Do Canadians Spend on Lottery Tickets? (2026)

Canadians spend about $10.5 billion a year on lottery tickets, roughly $309 for every adult in the country. That figure comes from the five provincial lottery corporations’ own annual reports, and it’s bigger than the number Canadians give when a survey asks them directly. Below is the province-by-province breakdown, what the odds actually are, and where the money ends up.

How much do Canadians spend on lottery tickets?

Canadians spend about $10.5 billion a year on lottery tickets. Five Crown corporations run every legal lottery in the country, and three of them publish what players spend: Ontario’s OLG (opens in a new tab) booked $4.15 billion in retail lottery sales, Loto-Québec (opens in a new tab) $2.91 billion, and the Western Canada Lottery Corporation (opens in a new tab) $1.56 billion across Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and the three territories. Those three cover 79% of Canadian adults and add up to $8.62 billion.

British Columbia and Atlantic Canada are the gap. BCLC (opens in a new tab) and Atlantic Lottery (opens in a new tab) report only what they keep after prizes, $526 million and $294 million respectively, not what players hand over. Applying the payout rates the other three disclose puts their combined ticket sales somewhere between $1.8 and $2.4 billion, which is how the national total lands around $10.5 billion.

Lottery and raffle tickets remain the most common form of gambling in the country. About 51.8% of Canadians aged 15 and up bought at least one in the past year, according to Statistics Canada (opens in a new tab). Provincial tracking runs higher: roughly 65% of Ontario adults bought a ticket in the past 12 months and about 1 in 4 play weekly, per OLG’s lottery player fact sheet (opens in a new tab) for the year ending March 2024.

Lottery spending by province

Each corporation reports on its own terms, so this table shows both measures: gross ticket sales where a corporation discloses them, and revenue kept after prizes, which all five report. Per-adult figures use Statistics Canada’s 2025 population estimates for ages 18 and up.

“Prairies and territories” is Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Yukon, the Northwest Territories and Nunavut, which WCLC reports as one market. “Atlantic Canada” is Newfoundland and Labrador, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island. Fiscal years ended March 31, 2025, except Loto-Québec, whose latest published year ended March 31, 2026. Ontario’s after-prizes figure is not separable because OLG reports lottery prizes for retail and online tickets as one line. Full sourcing is in the methodology below.

Two things stand out. Quebec plays the hardest: $394 per adult a year, a quarter more than Ontario, in a province with a bit more than half Ontario’s adult population. And two of Canada’s five lottery operators, covering about seven million adults in B.C. and Atlantic Canada, don’t publish how much their customers spend.

What households say they spend, and what the ledgers show

Statistics Canada asks households directly through its Survey of Household Spending (opens in a new tab). In 2023 the average household reported $137 a year on government-run lotteries, and $192 on all games of chance.

The corporations’ audited books work out to about $309 per adult. Since most Canadian households contain more than one adult, the ledgers show roughly four to five times what households say they spend. Lottery sales barely move year to year, so the gap isn’t a timing artifact. Under-reporting of gambling in household surveys is a well-documented pattern, which is why the corporate filings are the better basis for a national total, and why survey-based figures on lottery spending should be read as a floor.

What are your actual odds of winning?

The odds of winning the Lotto Max jackpot are 1 in 33,446,140 on a $6 play, matching 7 numbers from 52. For Lotto 6/49, matching all six numbers on the Classic Draw comes in at 1 in 13,983,816, which pays a fixed $5 million; the larger Gold Ball jackpot is a separate draw. Those numbers are set by the math of the draw, so buying a few extra tickets barely changes them. You’re far more likely to be struck by lightning in your lifetime than to hit either jackpot.

Source: OLG PlaySmart (opens in a new tab).

It helps to be clear-eyed about what those odds mean. A 1 in 33 million chance is so small that whether you buy one ticket or ten, your realistic expectation of winning the top prize is, in practical terms, still zero. The fun is real. The expected payout isn’t.

Where does your lottery money actually go?

Between 55 and 66 cents of every dollar comes back to players as prizes, and the rate varies more by province than most people would guess. The Western Canada Lottery Corporation returned 55% of sales as prizes last year. Loto-Québec returned 66%, a record $1.91 billion. Ontario sits around 60%, though its published prize figure covers online tickets as well as retail, so it can’t be divided out exactly. The spread mostly reflects the product mix: scratch tickets pay out more often and more generously than the big draws.

The rest covers retailer commissions, the cost of running the games, and a net contribution to provincial revenue, which helps fund things like hospitals and community programs. OLG alone paid $312 million in commissions to Ontario retailers.

That prize share is an average, and there’s a lot underneath it. Because a handful of jackpots take up so much of the prize pool, the typical player gets back far less than 60 cents on the dollar. Most tickets just lose. That isn’t a knock on anyone who enjoys the occasional flutter. It’s the design: a lottery has to pay out less than it takes in, or it couldn’t fund the prizes and everything else.

Why do we keep buying tickets anyway?

If the odds are this bad, why do half of us still play? Because a ticket buys something real and human: the fun of imagining, even just until the draw, that your money worries are gone. For a couple of dollars you get to picture the mortgage paid off and your notice handed in. That little hit of what-if is worth something, which is why “just don’t play” misses the point. Surveys have repeatedly found that a meaningful share of Canadians count on a lottery win as part of their financial plan, and that says less about math than about how far out of reach a secure future can feel.

The catch is that the daydream and the spending come bundled together. You can’t buy the hope without buying the ticket, and the ticket is where the money leaks out. So the real question is whether you can keep the daydream and stop the leak.

Is playing the lottery worth it?

For a few dollars of entertainment now and then, that’s your call, and there’s nothing wrong with it. The math only turns against you when a small weekly spend becomes something you lean on. Here’s what the same money looks like bought as tickets versus simply kept.

Ten dollars a week is about $520 a year, well above the $309 the average adult already puts through the terminal. Spent on tickets, most of it’s gone and the jackpot stays a fantasy. Saved, that’s $520 you still have, and it’s the start of an emergency fund or a trip. The lottery is entertainment, and like any entertainment you’re paying for the experience, not making an investment. The trouble starts when the two get confused.

How to get the thrill of a draw without losing your money

The pull of the lottery isn’t really the ticket. It’s those few seconds of “what if” while the numbers come up. Prize-linked savings keeps that feeling and takes out the cost. With Lodavo, you save in the bank account you already have, and the more you save the more free tickets you earn into a weekly draw, with a chance to win up to $10,000 and a guaranteed prize of at least $100 going to a user every single week. You never buy a ticket, and you never move money into Lodavo. Your savings stay in your own Canadian bank, connected read-only, earning whatever they already earn.

The difference: you keep your money

The difference from a lottery is the part that counts: when the draw is done, you still have all of your money. Win or lose, your balance is intact and a little bigger than last week. It’s a draw with no losing ticket. If you’re wondering whether that makes it a form of gambling, the short answer is no, and we walk through exactly why on our is prize-linked savings gambling explainer. For the bigger picture, including how the model has worked in the US and Canada, our guide to prize-linked savings in Canada goes deeper, and you can see every past draw on the winning numbers page.

Canadians will spend billions more on lottery tickets this year, and a lot of it will buy a few seconds of hope and not much else. You don’t have to choose between the fun of a draw and keeping your money. Save a bit each week, get your free tickets, and let the worst case be that you simply saved.

Ready to trade the losing ticket for a draw that costs you nothing? Download Lodavo free on the Apple App Store (opens in a new tab) or Google Play Store (opens in a new tab) and earn your first free tickets just by saving this week.

Terms and conditions apply. No purchase necessary (alternate method of entry available). Skill-testing question required. Open to legal residents of Canada who are the age of majority. Odds depend on the number of eligible entries received. Full rules and odds at our contest rules.

Methodology and sources

What is counted. Lottery products only: draw games, scratch and instant tickets, and the lottery-style products each corporation groups with them. Casino floors, video lottery terminals, online casino games and sports betting are excluded, which is why these figures are far lower than headline “gambling revenue” numbers for the same corporations. Charitable and non-government raffles are also excluded; Statistics Canada puts household spending on those at $26 a year.

Ticket sales versus revenue. The two are not interchangeable, and conflating them is the most common error in Canadian lottery coverage. “Ticket sales” is what players hand over before prizes are paid. “Revenue” as reported by BCLC, Atlantic Lottery, Loto-Québec and WCLC is what remains after prizes, typically 35% to 45% of sales. OLG is the exception: it reports lottery “proceeds” as sales before prizes are deducted.

Where the figures sit in each report. OLG’s is retail lottery proceeds of $4,149M against lottery prizes of $2,594M. Loto-Québec’s is lottery revenue of $995.6M plus $1.914B paid to winners, and sales are the sum of the two. WCLC’s is sales of $1.560B against lottery revenue of $705.4M. BCLC’s is lottery operations revenue of $526M. Atlantic Lottery’s is lottery games revenue of $294.5M, at note 25 of its financial statements, which excludes its much larger video lottery line. Per-adult figures use Statistics Canada Table 17-10-0005-01 (opens in a new tab), population aged 18 and over at July 1, 2025.

The national estimate. $8.62B in disclosed sales, plus B.C. and Atlantic Canada’s $820M of after-prize revenue converted to sales at the 55% to 66% payout range the other three corporations disclose. That produces a range of $10.4B to $11.0B, reported here as about $10.5 billion. It’s an estimate for exactly two of five jurisdictions, and it’s stated as one.

Update cadence. Refreshed annually as each corporation publishes, typically between June and October.

Reuse. The table is free to reproduce, in whole or in part, with attribution and a link to this page.