Some of the most popular Massachusetts Lottery retailers might not count Massachusetts residents as their most loyal clientele.

While the Bay State's biggest cities unsurprisingly produce the highest volume of lottery sales, communities along the state line punch above their weight once you adjust for population.

No municipality sold more Lottery products per capita in 2022 than Salisbury, which abuts the popular New Hampshire beach town of Seabrook. Several other Merrimack Valley border communities did above-average Lotto business. And of the 20 individual stores with the most sales, about half were basically a stone's throw from another state.

Officials don't track whether each scratch ticket or Keno game was purchased by a Bay Stater or someone who zipped down I-93 from Pelham, New Hampshire to Methuen, but Massachusetts Lottery Executive Director Mark William Bracken suggested it's a well-known trend in the industry that residents of other states like the offerings here.

"Walks like a duck, talks like a duck, looks like a duck, must be a duck," Bracken said.

This fall, two different New Hampshire residents won $1 million prizes in the Massachusetts Lottery in a five-week span. One of them even told Lottery officials he prefers the Bay State's offerings to the Granite State's, according to Bracken.

Some stores are considered "lucky" by players after selling tickets that earned major winnings. That can attract sustained interest and reinforce better performance in select locations.

Bracken also said Massachusetts offers more appealing games than its neighbors. In New Hampshire, $10 instant tickets generally offer top prizes between $50,000 and $500,000, Bracken said. Tickets sold for the same price here have top prizes of $4 million, "and the odds of winning are better," he said. And compared to New York, Massachusetts games have a better payout percentage, Bracken said.

"The 2,000 people [who live] in Lanesborough are not spending $2,600 a year per capita. That business is all coming directly from the full border of Pittsfield to the south and New York to the west," Bracken said.

Sales data provided by the Lottery show a clear popularity among retailers close to state lines.

The aptly named Ted's Stateline Mobil in Methuen continues to dominate the field of individual Lottery agents.

Ted's, which is the last building on its side of the road before the New Hampshire state line, sold more than $26.6 million in games in fiscal year 2023, more than twice as much as any other location. Second place went to Dick's Variety North in Salisbury, another business that essentially could not be any closer to New Hampshire, with $10.4 million in sales.

In fact, 10 of the 20 highest-selling Lottery agents last fiscal year are in cities or towns that directly border another state. Some of those, Bracken said, are "the first places you can possibly hit" driving across state lines.

"If you live on the New Hampshire border, you're not going to cross into Massachusetts to go to a liquor store. You're going to buy your liquor in New Hampshire, I get it. It's almost that same kind of argument," he said.

Interstate competition took center stage last month when the New Hampshire Lottery Commission published a 30-second advertisement warning about the "no-good Massachusetts tax shark that's been swimming around stealing all our lottery winnings."

"The @NHLottery is the best place to play and WIN with millions in tax savings," New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu tweeted. "Unlike other states, we've kept that Tax Shark at bay here in the Granite State -- so save yourself millions and remember to purchase and play here in the 603!"

Salisbury has a sizable lead at the top of the pack in Massachusetts in terms of Lottery sales by population, but the numbers also show the Lottery seems particularly popular in four towns south of Boston.

In 2022, vendors in Salisbury sold $37,923,428 in Lottery products, or about $4,143 per resident counted in Census data. West Bridgewater, the Plymouth County town that's a full 30 miles away from the Rhode Island border, ranked second last year with $2,368 per capita in Lottery sales. Rounding out the top 10 in Lottery sales per capita in 2022 were Abington ($2,132), New Hampshire border town Tyngsboro ($2,083), East Brookfield ($1,902), New Hampshire border town Methuen ($1,897), Holbrook ($1,832), Rhode Island border town Bellingham ($1,809), Shelburne ($1,779) and Raynham ($1,749).

For all the attention placed on geography, two more obvious factors play the biggest role in how much a city or town sells in Lottery products: how many people live there, and relatedly, how many businesses actually make the games available. The most populous communities had more sales, as did those with more agents that sell Lottery products.

A News Service review found little overlap between a city or town's demographics and its Lottery sales. The top communities for per-capita sales featured some municipalities that are significantly whiter than Massachusetts as a whole, like West Bridgewater and East Brookfield, and some that have larger populations of color, like Methuen.

Wealthier cities and towns were slightly less likely to have a high rate of Lottery sales per capita than less affluent communities, but the trend was not particularly strong. Bracken said some of those areas might not have many agents, pushing sales into other locations.

"Wellesley only has six agents, so if you live in Wellesley and you don't go to that gas station [that sells Lotto products], well then, there's no chance," he said. "If you're a Lottery player, you really don't have the ability to play. We only have two agents in Dover. If you live in Dover, you have to buy your ticket somewhere. You're going to buy it where you work, you're going to buy it where you visit, you're going to buy it where you eat or drink."