How much lottery prize money goes unclaimed
Nobody publishes this. The state lotteries' own association says only that what happens to unclaimed prizes "varies from lottery to lottery". So we read the states' audited financial reports and added it up, and this page is the whole working.
Left the prize system
$2.61billion
Across 3 states, fiscal years 2010 to 2024. That is 45 state years, every one of them taken off an audited financial report.
What this counts, and what it refuses to
- Only money that left the prize system
- Unclaimed does not mean lost. Florida returns a fifth of its unclaimed money to future prize pools by statute, and New York recycles its first sixty million dollars every year as special prizes. That money was not lost by players, it was won by different ones. Counting it would add $243 million to the figure above and make it wrong.
- Only years every state reports, audited
- A total across a ragged set of years reads as one span and is not one. So the range stops at the narrowest state in the set. Texas marks its two most recent years unaudited in its own summary, which is why this ends at 2024 while two of the three states have published 2025. We hold 4 more figures than we counted.
Fiscal years are each state's own and they do not line up. Florida closes 30 June, Texas 31 August, Michigan 30 September. A year in this table is therefore approximate to within about three months, which matters for comparing one state to another and not at all for a sixteen year total.
Everything here was read on or after 18 September 2026. Annual reports land between December and March, so this is refreshed once a year.
State by state
| State | Reported unclaimed | Left the prize system | Where it went |
|---|---|---|---|
| Texas | $1.07 billion | $1.07 billion | indigent health care, border hospitals, veterans, then schools |
| Florida | $1.22 billion | $973 million | the Educational Enhancement Trust Fund |
| Michigan | $568 million | $568 million | the State School Aid Fund |
- Texas
- $1.07 billion left the prize system. A prize becomes unclaimed 180 days after the drawing. The fiscal year ends 31 August. Reported as "Unclaimed Prizes Transferred to State", money the lottery actually transferred to the state. Texas Government Code 466.408. Worst year was FY2023 at $88 million.
- Florida
-
$973 million left the prize system.
A fifth of it goes back into future prize pools or special prize promotions, so it is won by somebody else rather than lost.
A prize becomes unclaimed 180 days after a drawing, or 60 days after a scratch-off game closes. The fiscal
year ends 30 June.
The scratch-off clock runs from when a game closes rather than from the drawing, so those figures swing on game timing rather than on how many people forgot to check. Reported as "Unclaimed Draw ticket prizes / Unclaimed Scratch-Off ticket prizes", unclaimed prizes as reported, of which 80 per cent is transferred. Printed in thousands, so these are exact to the thousand and no further. s. 24.115(2), Florida Statutes. Worst year was FY2022 at $169 million. - Michigan
-
$568 million left the prize system.
A prize becomes unclaimed one year after the drawing, or when an instant game expires. The fiscal
year ends 30 September.
Michigan revised how it estimates this in October 2021, which is most of why the figure halved between 2021 and 2022. That is a change in method, not a change in what players did. Reported as "Less - unclaimed prizes", an audited accounting estimate, accrued from a historical average rather than counted out the door. McCauley-Traxler-Law-Bowman-McNeely Lottery Act, Act 239 of 1972. Worst year was FY2021 at $78 million.
Year by year
Reported unclaimed prizes, before the split that sends part of it back into future prize pools in some states. The figure at the top of this page is the smaller one.
What is not in this, and why
California
Researched and deliberately left out. California's reports disclose only unclaimed prizes "directly payable by the Lottery". The rest is netted inside prize expense and never printed as a figure at all. Its own State Auditor's three year total implies the real number is roughly double what the annual reports show, so the published line is a known fraction of the answer. A state that publishes part of the answer cannot go in a column whose heading says what the answer is.
New York
The figures exist and we could not open them: the lottery serves its financial statements from a host that refuses automated fetching. More interesting is what New York's statute says. The first sixty million dollars of unclaimed money each year is retained in the prize account and paid back out as special and supplemental Lotto prizes, and only the excess reaches the education fund. So most New York unclaimed money is not lost at all. It is won by somebody else.
The other forty odd states
Not done yet. This is the beginning of the table rather than the end of it, and the figure at the top of the page will grow as it fills. It will grow because coverage grew, not because more money went unclaimed, and when that happens this page will say so.
Every document this came from
Every one of these is a state auditor's report or an audited annual financial report published by the lottery itself. No figure on this page came from a news article, and none of them was estimated.
Free to use with credit. Includes the unaudited rows, marked, and the split between money that left the prize system and money a state put back into future prizes.