Lottery’s Real Competition Isn’t What Most People Think

By Jason Allsopp, SVP and Managing Director, Western Research, Angus Reid

Published July 21, 2026

People don’t walk into convenience stores thinking about lottery. They walk in thinking about coffee, gas, snacks, getting to work, getting home or picking up the one thing they forgot earlier in the day. Most retail trips already have a mission attached to them before the customer even opens the door.

That’s important because retail environments today are busy places. Consumers are distracted, trying to move quickly and balancing multiple things mentally at the same time. Somewhere in the middle of all that, lottery is trying to carve out a few seconds of attention.

We recently worked on a retail-focused market research project looking at player behavior in live retail environments, and one thing it reinforced quickly is that for many consumers, lottery is something added on while they are already doing something else, such as fueling up their car (68%), stopping for food such as snacks or candy (66%), or getting a drink (75%).

That sounds straightforward enough, but it has some pretty important implications for lotteries.

Historically, a lot of lottery strategy has quite reasonably been around visibility, placement, jackpots and awareness. Those things still matter, of course. But the reality is that many retail decisions today happen very quickly and with very little active consideration from consumers. People are trying to complete a task and move on with their day. So what does that mean for lotteries?

The Challenge for Lotteries

One of the more interesting aspects of this work was that it allowed us to move beyond assumptions and observe what was actually happening in retail environments. When we started unpacking the findings, it became clear that this wasn't simply a visibility problem.

Lottery products are highly visible. In most retail environments, consumers walk past signage, displays and lottery messaging multiple times during a single visit. Awareness is not really the challenge.

Great. Consumers know lottery is there. But what happens next? What actually drives engagement in the moment? What causes someone to add a ticket to their basket on one trip but not the next? And what role does the broader retail environment play in that decision?

Looking at Retail Through Three Lenses

One of the ways we approached the work was by deconstructing the retail experience into three broader realities consumers are managing every day: disposable income, time and attention. That sounds simple enough, but it proved to be a useful way of looking at the category.

1. Disposable income. Consumers are constantly making decisions about where discretionary dollars go. Lottery doesn't make those decisions in isolation. It's competing within the same spending environment as everything else that might capture a consumer's attention or wallet at that moment. Among lottery players who decided not to play in the past week, the leading reasons were having already planned their spending (40%) and choosing to allocate that money elsewhere (38%).

2. Time. Most retail trips are mission-based before consumers even enter the store. They know why they're there and they are trying to complete that task efficiently. That leaves very little room for discovery or prolonged consideration. Most products purchased at convenience stores, including lottery products, are planned purchases. Necessities like fuel are planned by 97% of buyers, while smaller indulgences are also often planned, with 69% of lottery players and 67% of snack and candy buyers deciding in advance.

3. Attention. Consumers are processing a lot while moving through retail environments, and lottery is competing for a very small window of attention somewhere in the middle of all that. When recent convenience store visitors were asked which products and services they recalled from their visit, the intense competition for attention became evident. Unaided recall was highest for snacks and food items (44%), followed by beverages (37%), specific brands (42%), cigarettes and tobacco products (19%), and the lottery (17%).

It was interesting to see how these three things work together. A consumer may have the disposable income to purchase a ticket, but not the time to stop and consider it. They may have the time, but their attention is somewhere else entirely. Looking at the category through those three lenses helped us think differently about the role lottery plays within the broader retail environment.

What Became Clear Pretty Quickly

One of the more valuable parts of this work was getting out of the traditional research environment and into live retail settings. Sometimes consumers tell you one thing in a survey environment, but when you observe what is actually happening at retail, the picture becomes more nuanced.

That isn't because consumers are trying to mislead anyone. It's because a lot of retail decisions happen quickly and often without much reflection.

What stood out was how small the actual window for engagement can be, with the average person spending just five minutes a day engaging with the lottery. That is just 0.35% of someone’s day. In some cases it's only a few seconds; a moment at checkout, just a quick glance while someone is already focused on something else.

For lotteries, that's important because it reinforces how critical convenience really is. If consumers only give you a few seconds, then those few seconds need to work hard.

For me, that was one of the bigger takeaways from the work. Lottery doesn't exist only at the terminal or POS. It exists within a much broader retail environment where consumers are managing competing demands on their time, attention and spending.

The better we understand that reality, the better positioned lotteries are to make decisions that reflect how consumers actually behave at retail.

Jason Allsopp is the SVP and Managing Director, Western Research, at Angus Reid (www.angusreid.com). A leading expert in gaming research, Jason is a sought-after speaker and strategist with over two decades of progressive experience in the market research industry.Jason brings expertise in both qualitative and quantitative methodologies, advanced analytics, and practically all standard research methodologies. With a Master of Business (Research) degree, Jason’s career in research has seen him in leadership roles at some of the world's leading firms, including Ipsos, Vision Critical and AC Nielsen.