Lottery Spend Per Adult by Country, With the Arithmetic

Per-capita lottery spending is quoted constantly and sourced almost never. This article does it the slow way: a published sales figure, a published adult population, and the division written out so you can check it.

Eight countries appear. They are the ones where we could verify both an annual lottery sales figure from the operator or regulator and an 18+ population from a national statistics office or Eurostat, on a comparable basis. Others were dropped rather than estimated — the list of casualties is at the end, and it is instructive.

The method

Spend per adult = annual lottery ticket sales (gross, before prizes) ÷ resident population aged 18 and over

Gross sales, not net losses, because that is the figure most operators publish. No currency has been converted. Comparing €452 with $392 requires an exchange rate and a purchasing-power adjustment, and both would introduce error we cannot source. Within a single currency the comparison is exact.

The euro area, directly comparable

Four euro-area countries, same currency, same basis. This is the cleanest comparison on the page.

The workings:

• Italy: 22,679,400,000 ÷ 50,177,462 = €451.98
• Spain: 10,586,900,000 ÷ 41,167,352 = €257.17
• Ireland: 855,700,000 ÷ 4,207,571 = €203.37
• Germany: 8,300,000,000 ÷ 69,602,098 = €119.25

Italian adults spend 3.8 times what German adults spend on lotteries. That is 451.98 ÷ 119.25 = 3.79, in the same currency, in adjacent economies, on the same class of product. It is the largest verified gap in this article and it has nothing to do with wealth.

Italy's figure is the sum of raccolta (handle) across Lotterie (€12,385.6m retail, €266.6m online), Lotto (€7,920.3m, €240.0m) and giochi numerici a totalizzatore such as SuperEnalotto (€1,758.1m, €108.9m), from the Agenzia delle Dogane e dei Monopoli's Libro Blu. Scratchcards dominate it — the Lotterie line alone is more than half the total, which fits the pattern in return to player by game, where instants sell hardest.

Germany's is the Deutscher Lotto- und Totoblock's published Spieleinsätze of "knapp 8,3 Mrd. €" for 2025, of which 6aus49 is about €3.4bn and Eurojackpot about €2.4bn. DLTB publishes only a rounded total, so treat €119.25 as approximate.

The other four

Different currencies, so read each row against itself rather than across.

• US: 104,680,929,000 ÷ 266,978,268 = $392.10
• Australia: 8,046,080,000 ÷ 21,792,296 = A$369.22
• UK: 7,886,300,000 ÷ 55,022,253 = £143.33
• Japan: 759,800,000,000 ÷ 106,729,000 = ¥7,119

The Australian figure combines two operators, because no single one covers the country: The Lottery Corporation's lotteries turnover of A$6,759m for the year to 30 June 2025, plus Lotterywest's Western Australian gross sales of A$1,287.1m. 6,759 + 1,287.1 = A$8,046.1m.

A cross-check that actually works

Australia is the one country where an official body independently publishes lottery spend per adult, which gives us a chance to test the whole method.

The Queensland Government Statistician's Office puts national lottery turnover at A$368.27 per adult for 2024-25 in Australian Gambling Statistics.

Our figure, built from two operators' annual reports and the ABS population, is A$369.22.

The difference is 0.95 in 369, or 0.26% — two entirely independent routes to the same number. That is about as good a validation as this kind of arithmetic gets, and it is the reason to trust the other seven rows within their stated caveats.

Sales are not losses

Sales tell you how much money went in. Prizes recycle most of it. The figure that actually leaves players' pockets is net loss = sales − prizes.

The UK working: 7,886.3 − 4,351.1 = 3,535.2, and 3,535,200,000 ÷ 55,022,253 = £64.25. Return to player 4,351.1 ÷ 7,886.3 = 55.2%.

Japan is the more arresting row. Takarakuji publishes its own split: 46.5% to prizes, 36.2% to prefectural governments, 16.0% to costs and 1.3% to publicity. A return to player of 46.5% is among the lowest of any major lottery — see the payout ratio league table — which means a Japanese adult buying ¥7,119 of tickets loses ¥3,812 of it, more than half.

Compare that with the UK, where £143.33 of tickets costs £64.25 in net losses. Japan's players spend less and lose proportionally more. Sales rankings and loss rankings are not the same ranking, which is why quoting sales alone is misleading.

What these totals leave out

Charity and society lotteries. The UK's £143.33 covers the National Lottery only. People's Postcode Lottery alone sold £734.8m in 2025:

734,800,000 ÷ 55,022,253 = £13.35 per adult

— nearly a tenth again, before the Health Lottery and hundreds of smaller society lotteries. The Gambling Commission's participation data agrees: 16.3% of British adults bought a charity lottery ticket in the past four weeks against 31.0% for National Lottery draws (who plays the lottery). What those tickets return is compared in charity lotteries vs state lotteries.

Whole operators, in several rows. Spain's figure excludes ONCE, a large separate lottery operator. Germany's excludes the class lotteries and social lotteries such as Aktion Mensch. Japan's excludes the toto/BIG sports lottery. Australia's excludes Keno. Every one of these understates its country.

Retailer commissions, in the US row. The Census Bureau's figure is ticket sales excluding commissions, which understates gross sales by roughly 5–6% against the other countries' figures. The true US number is higher than $392.10.

Cross-border play, which is recorded where the ticket was sold, not where the buyer lives — material in Europe and along US state lines. And illegal or unregulated play, invisible to all of these figures by definition.

The honest caveats

• These are not household figures. Anyone quoting "the average household spends X" is either using a household expenditure survey — which under-reports lottery spending severely, a problem documented in are lotteries a regressive tax? — or dividing sales by households and calling it spending.
• Averages hide the distribution. Lottery spending is heavily concentrated: most people spend nothing or very little and a minority spend a great deal. An average of £143 does not describe a typical player.
• Periods differ. Italy, Spain, Ireland and Germany are calendar years; the UK runs to 31 March, Australia and Japan to 30 June and 31 March, the US on state fiscal years. Close enough to compare, not close enough to treat as precise.

Countries dropped, and why. Canada — the five provincial corporations report on incompatible bases (OLG and WCLC gross, Loto-Québec and BCLC net of prizes), and no regulator publishes a national total; adding them would be arithmetic nonsense. Finland — Veikkaus publishes only gross gaming revenue, never amounts wagered, so its figures are not comparable. Singapore — the Tote Board reports lotteries and sports betting as a single combined line that cannot be separated.

In each case a number was available and we did not publish it, because it would not have meant what readers would assume it meant.

To work out your own spend rather than your country's, use the lifetime spend calculator or the invest-instead calculator.