NY Scratch-Off Statistics 2026: 18 Key Numbers from Official Data
Every statistic on this page is computed from the official New York Lottery prize-claim feed (published by the NY State Gaming Commission via data.ny.gov) and from ScratchOffsNY's own daily tracking panel — 88 consecutive daily snapshots of every active game, March 13 through June 9, 2026. Figures marked "live" reflect June 9, 2026 and are recomputed daily on our rankings pages.
Journalists, bloggers, and researchers: these numbers are free to cite with attribution. See how to cite at the bottom. For methodology questions, see our methodology page and data sources.
Winning and odds
1. About 1 in 4.4 New York scratch-off tickets wins a prize. Averaged across all 65 active games, the overall printed odds are 1 in 4.37 — roughly 23% of tickets win something, though most wins are break-even or less than the ticket price.
2. The best overall odds on any active NY game are 1 in 3.55; the worst are 1 in 8.0. The spread between the friendliest and least friendly active game is more than 2x — which game you pick matters.
3. NY scratch-offs return an average of 64 cents per dollar. The average payout rate across active games is 64.1% of money wagered, returned as prizes.
4. A $30 ticket pays back 26 percentage points more than a $1 ticket. Average payout rate climbs steadily with price:
| Ticket price | Average payout rate |
|---|---|
| $1 | 49.9% |
| $2 | 58.7% |
| $3 | 61.1% |
| $5 | 64.7% |
| $10 | 69.1% |
| $20 | 71.5% |
| $30 | 76.0% |
The market, live
5. There are 65 active NY scratch-off games at seven price points ($1, $2, $3, $5, $10, $20, $30), sold at more than 18,000 licensed retailers statewide.
6. $3.36 billion in scratch-off prizes are currently unclaimed across all active NY games — the total remaining prize pool as of June 9, 2026.
7. An estimated 1.7 billion scratch-off tickets are printed across the currently active NY games, based on each game's published prize counts and overall odds.
8. 53 top prizes of $1 million or more are still waiting to be won, spread across 26 active games. Counting every prize of $100,000 and up, 69 remain across 34 games.
9. The largest top prize currently available is $10,000,000 (300X the Money, a $30 ticket).
10. 19 of the 65 active games — 29% — are down to their final top prize. Our tracking shows these are statistically the worst buys on the wall (see stat 15).
How often top prizes actually get hit
The next set of numbers comes from our 88-day daily panel — we snapshot every game's per-tier remaining-prize counts and record every day a top prize disappears.
11. A six-figure scratch-off top prize is claimed in NY about 1.5 times per week. Over 88 tracked days, 19 top prizes of $100,000+ were claimed.
12. A $1,000,000+ scratch-off prize is hit about once every 10 days in New York. Nine $1M+ top prizes were claimed in our 88-day window — including a $10,000,000 Ultimate Cash grand prize on June 5, 2026.
13. Top prizes are most often claimed when a game is 60–85% sold out. About 14% of game-days in that sell-through band saw a top-prize claim, versus roughly 3% early in a game's life (under 30% sold) and 7% in the 30–60% band.
14. The final top prize of a game is claimed at about one-third the daily rate of earlier top prizes. Across 1,646 tracked prize-days, games sitting on their last top prize saw a claim on just 0.24% of days, versus 0.62% when four or more top prizes remained.
What buyers actually get back
Realized payout = prize value actually claimed per dollar actually spent, measured over a fixed window. It is the closest thing to ground truth in scratch-off analysis.
15. Games down to their last top prize return 3–4 cents less per dollar. In every price tier, games with exactly one top prize remaining realized lower 14-day payouts than games with two or three left ($1–$3 tier: 59.6 vs 64.0 cents; $5: 64.3 vs 67.0; $10+: 68.3 vs 72.1). Full analysis: the last top prize trap.
16. Weekend payouts beat Monday–Tuesday payouts 11 weeks out of 11. Realized payout was an average of 1.9 cents per dollar higher on Saturday–Sunday than Monday–Tuesday in every single week of our panel.
17. New games launch about once every 10 days, and each launch costs similar-priced games roughly 13–14% of their sales velocity. Nine new games entered the NY rotation during our 88-day window; same-price incumbent games lost 13–14% of their sales pace in the two weeks after a launch, versus a 4% baseline drift.
18. New games hold no payout advantage. Brand-new games (0–14 days old) realized about 66 cents per dollar over the following two weeks; games older than 120 days realized about 68 cents. The "fresh game premium" is a myth — what matters is the current remaining prize structure, not the game's age.
How to cite these statistics
All figures are free to use with attribution. Suggested citation:
"ScratchOffsNY analysis of New York Lottery prize-claim data (NY State Gaming Commission via data.ny.gov), June 2026 — scratchoffsny.com"
Live figures (stats 1–10) are recomputed daily and may drift from the June 9, 2026 values above; the current values are always on our rankings and top prizes claimed pages. Panel figures (stats 11–18) are fixed results from the March 13 – June 9, 2026 tracking window. Questions or data requests: see about.
One transparency note: the NY Lottery prize-claim feed does not publish winner names or the store that sold each top prize. Statistics here are game-level and date-level. We are pursuing retailer-level claim records through a Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) request and will update this page if that data becomes available.