How much lottery prize money goes unclaimed
Nobody publishes this. The state lotteries' own association will only say that what happens to unclaimed prizes "varies from lottery to lottery". So we read the states' audited financial reports and added it up ourselves. This page shows all our working.
Left the prize system
$2.61billion
Across 3 states, fiscal years 2010 to 2024. That's 45 state years, every one taken off an audited financial report.
What this counts, and what it leaves out
- Only money that left the prize system
- Unclaimed doesn't mean lost. Florida puts a fifth of its unclaimed money back into future prize pools, and New York recycles its first sixty million dollars every year as special prizes. Players didn't lose that money. Different players won it. Counting it would add $243 million to the figure above and make it wrong.
- Only years every state reports, audited
- A total built from a ragged set of years reads like one clean span and isn't. So we stop at the narrowest state in the set. Texas marks its two most recent years unaudited, so this ends at 2024 even though two of the three states have published 2025. We're holding 4 more figures than we counted.
Each state runs its own fiscal year and they don't line up. Florida closes 30 June, Texas 31 August, Michigan 30 September. So a year in this table is good to within about three months. That matters if you're comparing two states, 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 we refresh this 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 some states send part of it back into future prize pools. The figure at the top of this page is the smaller one.
What's not in this, and why
California
We researched California and then left it out on purpose. Its reports disclose only unclaimed prizes "directly payable by the Lottery". The rest is buried inside prize expense and never printed as a figure at all.
California's own State Auditor put out a three year total that implies the real number is roughly double what the annual reports show. A state that publishes part of the answer can't sit in a column that claims to be the whole answer.
New York
The figures exist and we couldn't open them. The lottery serves its financial statements from a host that blocks automated fetching.
What New York's law says is more interesting anyway. The first sixty million dollars of unclaimed money each year stays in the prize account and goes back out as special and supplemental Lotto prizes. Only what's left over reaches the education fund. So most unclaimed money in New York isn't lost. Somebody else wins it.
The other forty odd states
Not done yet. This is the start of the table, not the end of it, and the figure at the top will grow as we fill it in. It'll grow because we covered more states, not because more money went unclaimed, and we'll say so on this page when it happens.
Every document this came from
Every one of these is a state auditor's report or an audited annual report published by the lottery itself. No figure on this page came from a news article, and we estimated none of them.
Free to use with credit. It includes the unaudited rows, clearly marked, and the split between money that left the prize system and money a state put back into future prizes.