The trend of lower sales and higher prize payouts continued at the Mass. Lottery last month, officials reported Tuesday morning as they expressed optimism about holiday scratch ticket sales over the next month.

The Lottery sold $450.6 million worth of its products in October, a $23.8 million or 5% drop compared to October 2023. A huge drop in Powerball sales ($9.7 million sold last month for a high jackpot of $478 million compared to $37 million sold a year prior when the jackpot reached $1.67 billion) more than offset sales increases in other key product categories, like scratch tickets and Keno.

That Powerball decline combined with a $17 million increase in scratch ticket grand prizes claimed in October 2024 to yield an estimated profit of $71.1 million last month compared to $83 million in October 2023, a decrease of $11.9 million or 14.3%.

Through October, fiscal 2025 Lottery sales are down $113.6 million compared to the same point in fiscal year 2024, Executive Director Mark William Bracken reported to the Lottery Commission on Tuesday morning.

"For the fiscal year, you'll notice, again, a majority of our [products] are down and down significantly. The one outlier being our monitor games, with the strong showing from Keno, being up a little bit more than 3.3% at 13 million [dollars]. And we'll be talking about that more as the months come on," Bracken said. "But we are seeing a rebound this current month of November as well, and hopefully we'll have some better numbers next month with regard to instant ticket sales as well as those are slowly rebounding as well."

Fiscal 2025's year-to-date estimated profit of $319 million is lagging the $410.9 million profit turned in during the same four months of fiscal 2024. After adjusting for a shift in the calendar, Bracken said the Lottery's fiscal 2025 profit is running an estimated $86.5 million behind last year, the gap having grown by more than $20 million since September's report.

Amid the softened sales, the Lottery is also paying out a greater percentage of its revenue as prizes. The year-to-date prize payout for the first four months of fiscal 2025 is 75.63%, compared to 72.66% for the first four months of fiscal 2024. The year-to-date prize payout percentage has been higher than at any point back to the start of fiscal 2021 since fiscal 2025 began with a 76.8% prize payout for July.