Where does the lottery money go?
An honest breakdown. €3.5 billion in annual stakes, broken down to the last cent.
When you fill in a lottery slip for €1.20, you are not really just paying for a chance to win. With that one coin you fund a whole chain of recipients that almost nobody talks about. A bit for yourself, a bit for your federal state, a bit for the sports clubs in your region, a bit for the person behind the counter at the corner shop.
On this page the owl does the maths and shows where every cent lands. It is not a moral question, it is an arithmetic one. But the answer is surprising.
The big split
Every euro staked on Lotto 6aus49 is split between five recipients according to a fixed formula anchored in law. It has worked this way for decades, and all 16 state lottery companies stick to it.
- Winnings paid back to players50 %
- Lottery tax to the state16.67 %
- Concession levies for public-benefit purposes23 %
- Commission for the lottery retailers5–6 %
- Operating costs of the lottery company4–5 %
50 percent goes back to players as winnings. That half is built into the game system. Lotto.de confirms it in the official game rules. It is a target figure that works out over the year, not in every single draw. If nobody hits six correct numbers plus the Superzahl, the class-1 sum rolls over into the next jackpot. Our jackpot section explains how that works.
Around 17 percent goes to the state as lottery tax. The German Racing Betting and Lottery Act sets a 20 percent tax on the stake, but on the net amount after the tax itself has been deducted. That works out to 16.67 percent of the gross stake. This is governed by § 29 RennwLottG. This tax goes straight into the budget of the federal state in which the slip was handed in.
Around 23 percent are concession levies for public-benefit purposes. This levy is regulated at state level and varies slightly between the federal states. It flows either directly to charitable recipients or, via the state budget, into earmarked funding programmes. We take a closer look at how this is distributed further down.
About 5 to 6 percent is commission for the lottery retailers. This is the part that lands directly in local retail, at the corner shop or the newsagent three streets over. According to official figures, Lotto Niedersachsen pays 6.14 percent, Lotto Baden-Württemberg 5.5 percent. Other states fall somewhere in between.
The rest, around 4 to 5 percent, covers the operating costs of the lottery company. Staff, IT, advertising, security, supervisory structures. Worth knowing: the 16 state lottery companies are public or non-profit organisations, they do not make a profit for private owners. Whatever is not paid out, taxed or passed on stays in their own administration. The companies also fund their own marketing activities, more on that later.
What this means in real numbers
In the record year of 2024, around 3.5 billion euros were wagered on Lotto 6aus49 in Germany. The Deutscher Lotto- und Totoblock (German lottery and pools association) documented this in its annual report. Broken down by the formula above, it works out roughly as follows:
| Recipient | Share | 2024 total |
|---|---|---|
| Winnings to players | 50 % | approx. €1.75 billion |
| Lottery tax of the states | 16.67 % | approx. €580 million |
| Concession levies for public-benefit purposes | 23 % | approx. €805 million |
| Commission for the retailers | 5.5 % | approx. €195 million |
| Operating costs of the lottery companies | 4.8 % | approx. €170 million |
These are not small amounts. The lottery tax of all 16 states alone adds up to almost 600 million euros a year, flowing into the state budgets as regular tax revenue. The concession levies, at over 800 million euros, fund clubs, theatres, monuments, welfare organisations and nature conservation.
In 2025 the stakes were slightly lower, at around 3.4 billion euros. A full year-by-year breakdown is still pending, but the order of magnitude barely changes.
Who gets the money for the public good?
The roughly €800 million in annual concession levies flow into four big areas that are anchored in every (German) state:
Sport: state sports associations, the German Olympic Sports Confederation, Olympic training centres, regional sports clubs. A substantial part of Germany's grassroots sports infrastructure is co-funded by lottery proceeds.
Welfare: the big welfare organisations such as Caritas, Diakonie, AWO and the German Red Cross receive funds on a regular basis. The Bundesarbeitsgemeinschaft der Freien Wohlfahrtspflege (the umbrella body of independent welfare organisations) is funded too.
Art, culture, heritage conservation: theatres, museums, the German Foundation for Monument Protection, regional cultural foundations. Here the lottery is one of the largest non-tax funders in many federal states.
Environmental and nature conservation: state foundations for nature conservation, heritage and cultural care, regional environmental projects. The NRW-Stiftung is a well-known example here.
WestLotto in North Rhine-Westphalia alone says it has, since 1955, provided over 32 billion euros for charitable purposes. Projected across all 16 lottery companies, that means well over €100 billion since the founding of the Federal Republic.
Sponsorship is not funding. An important distinction.
This is where a common misunderstanding needs cleaning up. When Lotto Bayern appears on a Bundesliga shirt, or Lotto Baden-Württemberg on the boards at a tennis tournament, it looks like a direct consequence of the charitable funding. But it is not.
There are two separate pots, and they should stay separate.
Pot 1: the statutory earmarked levies. These are the roughly 23 percent concession levies and the 17 percent lottery tax from the amount wagered. They flow automatically and as a legal obligation to the federal states and to charitable recipients. The lottery company has no say in it, it simply passes the money on.
Pot 2: the voluntary marketing sponsorship. This is money from the lottery company's operating-cost share. Lotto Bayern is officially a premium partner of the Bayerischer Fußball-Verband (Bavarian football association), sponsors Bundesliga clubs in football and basketball as well as tournaments in tennis, equestrian and winter sports. Lotto Baden-Württemberg maintains partnerships with higher-league clubs and top athletes. This is classic marketing, just like any other company that puts its brand name on shirts, boards or tournament advertising.
The distinction matters: anyone who plays the lottery automatically funds sports clubs, welfare organisations and cultural institutions through the statutory levies. Anyone who sees a lottery logo on a shirt sees, on top of that, a marketing investment by the lottery company out of its own advertising budget, funded from the roughly 5 percent operating costs. The sponsorship does not come directly from the stakes, then, but from the lottery company's administrative budget.
Both pots can have a similar regional effect, but they come from two clearly separate sources of money.
State practice: who decides where the money goes?
This is where it gets interesting, because the way money is distributed differs from federal state to federal state. Four different routes have become established.
Route 1: directly to funding foundations.
The lottery company passes the concession levy on to independent foundations, which
then fund projects on their own.
Examples: North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW-Stiftung), Berlin (DKLB-Stiftung), Lower Saxony (Stiftung Niedersachsen für Kultur).
Route 2: to the state-level umbrella bodies of the funding areas.
The funds go to the lead associations for sport, welfare, culture and the environment,
which then distribute the money among their member organisations.
Examples: Lower Saxony (for the non-cultural areas), Rhineland-Palatinate, Thuringia, Saxony-Anhalt.
Route 3: via state ministries.
The funds are parked in the state budget, and the relevant ministries (sport, social
affairs, culture, environment) decide on allocation and use.
Examples: Hesse, Baden-Württemberg (Wettmittelfonds, in law since 1948), Brandenburg, Schleswig-Holstein.
Route 4: straight into the general state budget.
Here there is no specific earmarking. The concession levy flows into the overall budget
and funds education, police, administration and infrastructure there.
Examples: Bavaria, Hamburg, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, Saxony, Bremen, Saarland.
This classification is based on the research overview of lottery funding in the federal states (Blog-Förderlotse 2023) and on publicly available self-descriptions by the state lottery companies. The distribution practice can change, and some federal states run mixed models.
What does this mean in practice? If you play the lottery in NRW, you very likely fund concrete sport and cultural projects through the NRW-Stiftung. If you play in Bavaria, you fund the entire state budget. Both paths are legitimate, both are transparently regulated. They simply differ in how the money arrives in the end.
You will find a detailed breakdown per (German) state, with the actual 6aus49 stakes, on our map of the German states.
The corner shop
About 5 to 6 percent of every euro you stake stays directly in local retail. This is the part that keeps the roughly 21,000 lottery retailers in Germany alive.
In the vast majority of cases a lottery point of sale is not a standalone business. It is an add-on inside a shop that already exists: a newsstand, a small supermarket, a petrol station, a stationery shop. The operators are independent retailers, often family businesses. They earn a sales commission on the amount wagered and a small share when small wins are paid out.
On a 1.20-euro slip that comes to around 6 cents for the shopkeeper. Sounds like little. But for an average lottery retailer with annual lottery turnover of 100,000 euros, that adds up to roughly 5,000 to 6,000 euros in pure lottery commission, plus extra income for Spiel 77, Eurojackpot and other lotteries.
Lotto Thüringen raised commissions in 2025 for the first time since 2015, in NRW the retailers' association has been fighting for an adjustment for years. This shows that lottery is an important footfall driver and a relevant source of income for many small retailers, but nobody gets rich from lottery. So when you pick up a lottery slip and hand it to the shopkeeper, you are giving them a small but real contribution.
One exception: online play. This calculation only applies to slips handed in at a physical point of sale. If you play online via the websites or apps of the state lottery companies, you never pass a retailer. The roughly 6 cents then do not flow to a local retailer, but stay with the lottery company and are used for its digital distribution and operating costs. In 2025 the online share was around 17.5 percent of all stakes, and rising. Put differently: one in every six lottery euros now skips the corner shop.
What is left for the player?
Back to the 1.20-euro slip. Split by the formula, the picture looks like this:
- 60 cents for the collective winnings payout. Spread across the year, half of all stakes flow back as winnings, into many small wins and a few large ones.
- 20 cents as lottery tax to the state. The money lands in the state budget and funds administration, education, police and social services there.
- 28 cents as a concession levy for charitable purposes. Depending on the state, this goes to sports clubs, welfare organisations, cultural institutions, nature conservation projects or into the general state budget.
- 6 cents to the retailer that takes the slip (when playing in store).
- 6 cents to the lottery company for operations and administration.
So when you play the lottery, you do not pay €1.20 for a chance to win. You pay 60 cents for a chance, 48 cents for public tasks and the common good, 6 cents for retail and 6 cents for administration.