Lottery is a form of gambling where people purchase tickets for a chance to win money or goods. The winner is selected by a random drawing. The odds of winning a lottery depend on how many tickets are sold and the total prize amount. In the United States, there are state-sponsored lotteries that award prizes ranging from cash to cars and houses. Privately sponsored lotteries are also popular in the United States and around the world. The word lottery is probably derived from Middle Dutch lot, or from Middle French loterie, which itself may be a calque on the Dutch word lotinge “action of drawing lots”.

Publicly sponsored lotteries became popular in Europe in the 15th century when towns used them to raise funds for town fortifications and to help poor residents. In the 18th century, public lotteries helped fund Harvard, Yale, and other colleges in the American colonies, and George Washington sponsored a lottery to raise money to support the Colonial Army.

In the modern sense of the term, a state establishes a monopoly for itself by legislation and then establishes a public agency to run the lottery (as opposed to licensing a private company in return for a share of the profits). The state initially begins with a modest number of relatively simple games and then, due to constant pressures for additional revenues, progressively expands the lottery into new games such as keno and video poker.

The expansion of lotteries into new games is a classic example of policy making that occurs piecemeal and incrementally, with little overall vision or direction and with the state’s political officials inheriting policies and a dependence on revenue sources they cannot control. Few, if any, state governments have a coherent gambling or lottery policy.