California Lottery Reports Record Sales Of $8 Billion

SACRAMENTO (CBS13) - Are Californians feeling luckier this year? One indicator might point to yes.

According to California Lottery, for the first time in its 37-year history, sales in a single fiscal year topped $8 billion, the lottery reports. Of that total, $6.4 billion came from scratchers sales.

As a result of the sales, public school districts in California received $1.86 billion in supplemental funding.

The agency says that, with a large number of retailers being closed in 2020 due to the pandemic, there was a lot of pent-up demand for the tickets. There was also a pull-back in the number of new games being launched and marketing activities.

"One of the biggest reasons for these significant gains was the fact that we were able to resolve distribution challenges that stunted sales last fiscal year. Specifically, the need to follow social distancing protocols essentially halved the number of workstations our warehouse workers could use to ship to our retailers," California Lottery Chief Financial Officer Nicholas Buchen said.

The previous record was set back in the fiscal year 2018-29 of nearly $7.4 billion.