Challenges, and Opportunities, With the Big Jackpot Games

5 minutes ago

17 min read

By NASPL Insights

Published September 22, 2026

Jackpot games, especially multijurisdiction jackpot games, are critically important to the overall health of the North American lottery industry. Partly because of the excitement they generate when the jackpots get really big – that excitement can spill over to other lottery games. They are also critical because of their (typically) 50% prize payouts. That helps balance the higher prize payout rates in other games, particularly scratch tickets, which on average account for about two-thirds of traditional lottery sales in the American jurisdictions that offer them.

Yet these games are dependent on jackpot growth, and that growth has slowed as players – perhaps numbed by billion-dollar prizes in the U.S. (as of this writing, 15 of them since 2016) – take longer to engage. The media takes longer to kick in their support. And whether or not it matters, the national jackpot games typically award their massive prizes to a single ticket-holder.

To get ideas about the challenges lotteries face with these games, and how they might better address them going forward, we asked our Associate Member Partners the following questions:

Many lotteries depend on jackpot games because of their 50% prize payouts. In your opinion, what are the key challenges with the current portfolio of these games, in an environment where the public takes longer and longer to engage? Do you have any ideas on how to address those challenges – does the industry need to consider a radical shift?

We encourage readers to carefully review the following answers on this topic. You’ll find a common theme – the need to offer more engagement throughout the long road to a giant jackpot. If you are attending the NASPL Annual Conference in Orlando, most of these companies have a presence at the trade show. Be sure to visit all the booths in the exhibit hall to learn more about how our partners are assisting lotteries with today’s challenges.

Jackpot games remain one of the lottery industry’s most unique assets. Over the last decade, we’ve seen a broad expansion of casino and sports betting – both online and retail. However, jackpot games remain the only way for players to win a life-changing amount with a wager of a few dollars. In addition, they are unique in their ability to generate word-of-mouth and earned media when jackpots roll. These are strengths that should be protected and amplified, not reinvented.

Rather than altering the games themselves in response to increasing competition, the industry should focus on creating a better player experience. The opportunity lies in strong relationships and brand affinity by making lottery participation more convenient, personalized, and relevant. The goal is to create more consistent engagement throughout the player journey and reduce reliance on jackpot-driven sales peaks.

This can be achieved in several ways:

Build Stronger Player Relationships Through Loyalty

Create more personalized experiences based on player preferences.
Make play easier through saved numbers, recurring purchases, and simple payment options.
Use loyalty programs to deliver relevant offers, recommendations, and communications that keep players connected and engaged.

Reduce Friction Across the Player Journey

Continue investing in digital tools such as mobile play slips.
Utilize online channels to drive add-on purchases. This has proven to be a welcomed option among players, with some lotteries seeing nearly 50% higher Double Play Powerball add-on sales online compared to retail channels.
Remove barriers and make it as easy as possible for players to act on purchase intent.

Expand Access and Convenience

Continue evolving retail through self-service and dispenser solutions.
Create a seamless experience across retail and digital channels.

The industry does not need a radical shift away from jackpot games. Instead, it should double down on what already makes them successful while modernizing the ecosystem around them. By investing in loyalty, convenience, and accessibility, lotteries can create a more personalized and frictionless player experience that drives stronger player relationships, fosters more consistent engagement between jackpot runs, and preserves the excitement, trust, and broad appeal that make jackpot games so powerful.

The Jackpot Paradox: Modernizing Traditional Draw Games

Jackpot games remain the financial bedrock of the lottery industry. Scratch tickets may generate higher sales, but draw games, through their broad appeal, lower prize payout, and contribution to beneficiaries continue to play a critical role.

Yet the model is under pressure. Jackpots are taking longer to capture public attention, reducing early-cycle sales, slowing jackpot growth, and producing fewer major events that keep games front of mind. This creates a self-reinforcing spiral.

The Core Challenge: Jackpot Fatigue

Jackpot games have changed very little over time. Most players use Quick Pick, creating a transactional relationship: people “do” the lottery rather than truly “play” it. This disconnect is especially acute with younger audiences, who now expect digital, interactive entertainment that delivers instant gratification and sustained engagement.

By contrast, the lottery cycle of “buy, draw, check, repeat” feels slow and passive. The industry has historically focused on huge jackpots, promoted through passive communications, but the threshold to inspire play is rising: amounts that once inspired national excitement now often struggle to motivate these occasional players.

Opportunity for Growth: Enhancing Player Value

Lottery growth depends on three levers:

1. Attracting new players.

2. Encouraging existing players to play more often.

3. Increasing spend when they do play.

Large jackpots benefit all three, but their ability to force consideration is weakening. Repeating the same “record jackpot” message is not enough. Lotteries must shift from promoting prize size alone to improving the quality of the player experience.

Invest Early and Focus on Benefits

Support rolls earlier rather than waiting until jackpots become impossible to ignore.
Use creative that sells the dream and the emotional benefits of winning, not just the headline number.
Prioritize early, benefit-led marketing, which can deliver materially stronger returns than pure jackpot messaging.

Rethink the Wait

Consider instant-win mechanics to provide immediate value through cash prizes, free plays, or digital content.
Use digital engagement to keep players connected, even in exclusively retail markets.
Offer subscription play so players never miss major jackpots.

Is Change Necessary?

Yes. The sector cannot mistake its current revenue stability for long-term sustainability. Draw-based games remain relevant, but the industry must challenge its assumptions about future participation.

We have an opportunity to move beyond the passive “buy and wait” format and to reposition jackpot games as modern, interactive entertainment. Without this evolution, lotteries risk watching a foundational product continually lose relevance.

– Ian Hannaford, US Games and Portfolio Lead

A challenging trend we see in our player research, also reflected in industry sales results, is that consumers increasingly favor immediacy. Waiting for a drawing or for the jackpot to reach a compelling level reduces excitement, and this is especially true for younger adult players. Another challenge is perceived payout. While jackpot games return roughly 50% overall, much of that value is concentrated in the top prize – limiting the prize value relative to odds of the lower-tier prizes compared to games returning 65-70%. A decline in socialization since the pandemic adds to these challenges. The organic buzz from people talking about jackpots or playing keno socially in bars and restaurants has historically benefited the whole industry. That subculture has become more muted. And, from an operations perspective, the performance of jackpot-driven games is difficult to forecast, adding unpredictability to revenue planning.

That said, jackpot games remain a cornerstone of the portfolio, widely recognized and deeply associated with lottery’s core promise of fulfilling dreams and possibilities. A study we conducted last year found that the average age of players for the large multistate jackpot games is 49. These games have a loyal, longstanding following, with playership averaging 10 years or more. Over the past three years, the branded multistate draw games accounted for about 10.81% of total traditional lottery sales, and all lotto games combined accounted for 14.97%. Ten years ago, those numbers were higher, but they’re still substantial. If the classic version of a potato chip brand does less now as a percentage of total sales than it did 10 years ago because you’ve added more flavors to choose from, do you get rid of the classic? No, because it’s still contributing a large percentage of sales. Similarly, the industry now has a full portfolio of games with their own value propositions, and every game doesn’t need to do everything.

We’ve found that increasing draw frequency is one of the most effective levers to drive engagement. Lotteries that have moved from two to three drawings per week, for example, have experienced strong sales gains. More draw days mean more opportunities to engage players, and research shows most purchases happen on draw days.

Like any classic product, the role of jackpot games may evolve, but they remain essential to the overall mix. The opportunity is to optimize these games and use them to help balance overall portfolio returns.

– Sarah Walker, Senior Director, Draw Portfolio Optimization

Jackpot games remain incredibly important to lotteries because they create unmatched awareness, excitement and returns. But the reality is that player behavior has changed. With more entertainment options competing for their attention, it’s taking larger jackpots and longer roll cycles to generate the same level of engagement we saw in the past.

One of the biggest challenges is maintaining momentum between those major jackpot moments. The “life-changing win” will always resonate. But today’s consumers expect experiences that feel more immediate, connected and engaging on a more regular basis.

At the same time, the industry has become increasingly reliant on a small number of jackpot brands to drive profitability. That can create pressure on lottery portfolios when engagement slows between runs.

I don’t believe the answer is a radical reinvention of jackpot games themselves. The core appeal is timeless. But I do think the industry has an opportunity and responsibility to evolve how these games fit within the broader player experience.

That means creating more touchpoints around the games through digital engagement, loyalty programs, second-chance opportunities and more connected retail and digital experiences. It also means continuing to strengthen the overall portfolio with products that deliver more frequent interaction and entertainment value alongside the large jackpot events.

Part of that evolution requires rethinking how we categorize players. The industry has historically segmented players – jackpot players, scratch-off players, numbers players, iLottery players – as distinct audiences. But they are increasingly the same person at different moments in their entertainment journey. Treating them as a unified lottery player – and designing experiences that move them fluidly across game categories – creates a real opportunity to introduce jackpot participation as a natural part of a broader play experience, rather than relying solely on jackpot size to drive engagement.

Lottery vendors play an important role in helping lotteries adapt. Whether through better use of data and analytics, more personalized engagement strategies, enhanced retail experiences or innovation across channels, the focus should be on helping lotteries sustain player connection between the headline jackpot moments.

The future isn’t about replacing jackpot games – it’s about building a more balanced and connected ecosystem around them that reflects how consumers engage with entertainment today.

– Jacob Kreider, Director, Operational Data Science

Beyond the Jackpot: Winning Attention in a World Full of Entertainment

Traditional draw games remain the foundation of many lottery portfolios, creating life-changing jackpots and headline moments that define our industry. But the world these games were built for has changed dramatically, and so have player expectations.

Today’s consumers have more entertainment options than ever. Streaming platforms, gaming, sports betting, social media, and mobile apps compete for the same limited resource: consumer attention. Entertainment is instant, personalized, and available on demand. Lotteries compete not only with other lottery products, but with every form of entertainment consumers can access with a tap.

Traditional draw games play an essential role, but many rely on longer play cycles and fewer moments of engagement. As consumer expectations evolve, so should the way we think about draw game content. The opportunity isn’t to replace the games players know and trust, it’s to complement them with experiences that reflect today’s entertainment habits.

The opportunity is to introduce more frequent moments of anticipation, digital-first experiences, and additional ways for players to engage. New draw games, designed for digital channels and built around quick play cycles with frequent drawings, would give players more opportunities to engage by building consecutive winning streaks and tracking how they compare with others, while preserving the anticipation, simplicity, and thrill of traditional draw games.

The future of draw games requires thoughtful evolution. By expanding draw portfolios with products designed for today’s consumers, lotteries can strengthen engagement, reach new audiences, and remain competitive.

Jackpot games remain essential to lottery portfolios because they are unmatched in awareness, participation, and player acquisition. We, like many others, see that the challenge is not their importance, but how heavily jackpots influence consistent engagement. When jackpots continue to roll over and build, lotteries can experience longer periods of softer demand, making revenue and player activity more variable.

A related consideration is player perception. The recent Mega Millions price adjustment showed that even strong jackpot products can face resistance when long-established purchase habits evolve. Early softness like this is often less about the brand and more about whether players clearly understand the value of the new experience.

The opportunity is not to move away from jackpot games, but to complement them with a broader engagement approach. Many lotteries are already exploring ways to strengthen engagement through more consistent, responsible play experiences beyond the headline draw. This can include using digital, retail, loyalty, CRM, and targeted promotions to keep players connected during lower jackpot periods, encourage cross-play across draw, eInstant, and Fast Play products, and creating meaningful reasons to participate.

When jackpots do surge, lotteries should absolutely maximize those moments. At the same time, there is a real opportunity to convert short-term excitement into longer-term, responsible and sustainable player relationships. So, while the industry might not require a radical shift in core products, there is an opportunity to continue evolving toward a more balanced operating model – one that treats jackpots as a powerful catalyst within a broader engagement strategy.

Jackpot games have long been the cornerstone of lottery portfolios, but a growing challenge is emerging. Consumers are taking longer to engage, and limited awareness until jackpots reach high levels is making traditional delivery methods less effective at converting interest into participation.

A key issue is the widening gap between lottery products and modern purchasing habits.

Today’s consumers expect convenience, personalization, and instant engagement, yet many jackpot games still depend on passive awareness and deliberate service-desk purchases. As attention spans shrink and entertainment options multiply, lotteries must remain visible and relevant throughout the customer journey.

Integrating lottery functionality directly into retailer point-of-sale (POS) and self-checkout (SCO) offers a compelling solution. Embedding lottery into the natural flow at the checkout allows operators to shift purchases from a separate action to a seamless extension of everyday shopping. Dynamic jackpot messaging increases awareness even when jackpots are not at peak levels. Personalized offers based on shopping behavior, digital ticket delivery, and frictionless payment integration further reduce barriers to

participation.

More importantly, integrated POS/SCO systems enable real-time engagement. Retailers can use targeted promotions when jackpots rise, encourage add-on purchases, and provide immediate feedback on winnings and upcoming draws. This keeps lottery products top-of-mind without requiring extra effort from the consumer.

The industry does not need to move away from jackpot games, but it does need a radical shift in how those games are presented, promoted, and purchased. Retail integration may be the bridge between a proven product and the expectations of the modern consumer.

We all know the challenge of jackpot fatigue. As jackpots grow, players pay attention. When they don’t, it becomes harder to generate excitement. While big jackpots will always drive interest, relying on them as the primary marketing engine can make it increasingly difficult to keep players engaged at lower prize levels.

The opportunity isn’t necessarily to change the games themselves, but to rethink how we promote them. Instead of waiting for jackpots to create buzz, we should be creating reasons for players to engage at every jackpot level. Twenty million can still feel exciting when supported by the right promotion, experience, or incentive.

That means treating promotions as an ongoing engagement strategy rather than a tactic reserved for slower sales periods. It also means recognizing that different players respond to different motivations. A first-time player, a lapsed player, and a loyal player all need different messages, channels, and reasons to participate.

In practice, that could include always-on promotional calendars tied to game moments instead of jackpot milestones alone: second-chance drawings, milestone rewards, social media contests, personalized CRM offers, and partnerships with brands, sports, and entertainment properties that bring added relevance and excitement to the player experience.

Rather than thinking about promotions as something to activate only when jackpots cool off, there’s an opportunity to make them a more consistent part of the overall marketing strategy. We’ve seen firsthand how the right engagement strategy can help lotteries reach new audiences, strengthen player loyalty, and create excitement at every jackpot level.

Jackpot games remain a cornerstone of lottery portfolios because they generate significant returns while creating the dream of a life-changing win. The challenge today is not the jackpot itself, but sustaining player engagement between jackpot peaks. As jackpots grow, consumers often wait until the prize reaches a headline-grabbing level before purchasing a ticket, creating longer periods of lower engagement and fewer opportunities to build excitement.

We believe the answer is not a radical shift in jackpot games, but a transformation in how players experience and engage with them. Extending the excitement by creating more visible, achievable, and interactive winning moments that complement the jackpot. This goes well beyond traditional second-chance promotions.

Imagine live or virtual game shows, national events, or surprise real-time experiences where players can participate for meaningful cash prizes and exclusive rewards tied to jackpot games. While these prizes may not be life changing individually, they create authentic winning stories, social content, and media attention that remind players that people really do win.

The industry has an opportunity to bring jackpot brands into communities, connect with younger audiences through live and digital engagement, and create winning experiences that keep players involved throughout the jackpot cycle instead of only when prizes reach record levels.

The jackpot should remain the driver, but the journey to the jackpot can become far more engaging. By creating more winners, more shared experiences, and more opportunities for participation, lotteries can strengthen loyalty, broaden their audience, and build sustainable engagement without fundamentally changing the game.

One of the biggest challenges facing jackpot games today isn’t the games themselves, it’s familiarity. Billion-dollar jackpots were once extraordinary events that captured national attention. Today, they’ve become expected. As a result, we’ve created a level of jackpot fatigue where ever-larger prize pools generate diminishing excitement, particularly among younger and occasional players.

The answer isn’t replacing cash. Cash will always be the foundation of lottery games. The opportunity is giving players another way to dream.

We’re living in the experience economy, where people place increasing value on memorable moments over material possessions. Lotteries can capitalize on that shift by pairing traditional jackpots with experiential rewards through second-chance drawings, loyalty programs, or promotional campaigns.

Experiential prizes do something cash often can’t: they make winning visible. While many jackpot winners choose to remain anonymous, winners of once-in-a-lifetime experiences are often excited to share their journey. Those authentic moments become powerful marketing assets that allow players to picture themselves winning.

Ultimately, lotteries sell possibility. Experiences bring that possibility to life in a way that’s emotional, visual, and inherently shareable.

The challenge facing jackpot games is not simply that players take longer to engage – it is that the industry has limited ability to discover what might engage them differently.

Innovation cycles differ dramatically across product categories. With instant products, lotteries have dozens of opportunities each year to test new ideas, gather consumer feedback, and refine future offerings. Frequent launches create a natural environment for experimentation and learning.

Jackpot and draw games operate differently. Launches are infrequent, development cycles are long, and the stakes are high. As a result, there is little tolerance for failure and fewer opportunities to introduce new concepts, mechanics, or player experiences. Innovation moves more slowly as consumer expectations evolve more rapidly.

One way to address this challenge is to rethink how the industry experiments. Today, collaboration around draw games often focuses on achieving consensus around a single concept that can be broadly adopted. While that approach creates scale, it may also limit the industry’s ability to discover new ideas.

What if collaboration served a different purpose? Rather than working together to launch the same game, lotteries could work together to launch different games. Imagine ten lotteries each introducing a distinct draw game concept with the shared objective of learning what resonates most with players. Instead of a single experiment, the industry would gain a portfolio of experiments. The most promising concepts could then be refined, expanded, and potentially scaled more broadly.

– Danny Bogus, CEO & Founder

Tradition Ensures Winning in the Future

The dependence of many lotteries on their jackpot games, partly from the perspective of “only 50% RTP,” can be viewed as a risk. This may be especially true given the increasing focus of players for faster (online) alternatives. The question posed is how to address this challenge.

But does this situation actually call for action? Jackpot games have been extremely successful in recent years. Partnerships between lotteries, joining their prize pool, have led to further growth and created a distinctive capability of traditional jackpot games compared to other (often illegal, private) providers.

These jackpot games make an essential contribution to the market position of the regulated lottery. The power of tradition and recognizability is and remains relevant. It concerns lottery games that, for most of us, are already played by our (grand-)parents and still create important financial resources for our community. The societal and responsible role that the lottery has built up in this way is invaluable for player trust.

Research shows that trust and integrity are important factors for players when choosing an operator. For this reason, the market position of lotteries is rock-solid. The jackpot game remains an important asset for attention-grabbing content. It is no coincidence that illegal providers often try to piggyback on existing jackpot games!

Traditional and “slow” jackpot games play an essential role in the lottery’s overall market position, including online. And we certainly wouldn’t want to miss the media frenzy of an insane jackpot just yet!

– Edwin van Zon, Business Development Director

Jackpot games are the cornerstone of lottery portfolios because they offer something uniquely compelling: a chance to win life-changing prizes from a small stake. However, as traffic often peaks when jackpots grow large and falls away between draws, the challenge is to create reasons for players to remain consistently engaged.

As today’s players expect personalized, always-on experiences, the problem isn’t with the games themselves, but rather with the growing gap between traditional lottery engagement models and modern consumer expectations. It therefore follows that rather than moving away from jackpots, the industry should focus on evolving the ecosystem around them.

Central to this is delivering a true omnichannel experience. Retail remains a critical engagement channel, while digital currently offers greater personalization and convenience. The goal should be to reduce friction between these worlds creating seamless journeys that help players discover, participate in, and return to lottery products, regardless of where they choose to engage.

Beyond this, play can be incentivized in several ways. Multi-vertical operators can strengthen engagement through cross-product promotion, introducing lottery to new audiences while keeping existing players active during quieter periods, while engagement tools like subscriptions, group play and loyalty rewards can help maintain meaningful activity both before and after draws.

We believe the future of lottery will be defined less by jackpot size and more by the quality of the player experience around it. Modern platform capabilities and open strategic partner ecosystems continue to help operators innovate while protecting the enduring appeal of the jackpot dream.

The challenge with today’s jackpot portfolio isn’t the games. It’s that we’ve trained players to wait.

Twenty years ago, $300 million stopped traffic. Today the casual player doesn’t look up until we cross a billion, and that threshold only moves one direction. So our two biggest games spend most of their roll cycles invisible, and every jurisdiction shares that exposure at the same moment. That’s not a marketing problem. It’s a structural one.

We’ve spent the last year deep in game performance data across multiple markets, and one finding changed how we think: Sustained engagement doesn’t come from prize size. It comes from how often a game rewards a player. Big prizes get you month one. The play experience gets you months two through twelve. Jackpot games, as currently built, offer one reinforcement event every few months and ask players to stay interested in between.

Two directions are worth serious consideration. First, faster reward cycles. Progressive and mid-tier jackpot mechanics that resolve in days or weeks keep the dream alive without depending on a record roll. Second, prizes money can’t buy. We’ve watched experiential prizes generate engagement that equivalent cash simply doesn’t.

Does the industry need a radical shift? I’d call it a radical rebalance. Jackpots should be a feature of a healthy portfolio, not the foundation. The lotteries that thrive in the next decade will stop asking “How big is the prize?” and start asking “How often does this game give players a reason to come back?”

– Brad Cummings, CEO & Founder

The jackpot portfolio isn’t broken. It’s carrying too much weight.

Lotteries have built too much of their future on a handful of jackpot games. When those games slow down, everything suffers. The real problem isn’t the jackpots themselves. It’s that the rest of the portfolio has failed to capitalize on what players want.

No other gaming platform, whether sports betting, prediction markets, or casinos, offers a shot at a life-changing prize from a single purchase. That’s lottery’s greatest advantage. Yet the industry reserves that experience for draw games that activate only two or three times a week.

The opportunity is to bring innovative prize mechanics into daily-traffic products. The challenge is that dynamic prize structures create stochastic liability by design. While this builds excitement, it can result in a range of payout outcomes.

Slow game innovation is understandable. Statutory guidelines, legislative constraints, and procurement cycles all matter. But another force has quietly shaped product strategy for decades: financial risk. Variance and uncertainty have pushed conservative game design instead of the bold prize experiences today’s players expect.

Prize indemnity insurance removes the uncertainty. A fixed premium can cap lottery prize liability, freeing capital, stabilizing net revenue, and providing greater certainty in returns to the state.

The next era of growth won’t come from asking jackpots to do more. It will come from extending the industry’s defining advantage across the broader portfolio. The technology exists. The financial solution exists. The question is whether the industry is ready to use them.

- Jackie Walker, Senior Account Executive, Lottery + Gaming