SACRAMENTO, Calif. (October 3, 2024) – The California Lottery is celebrating 39 years of being in business solely to generate extra revenue for public education. The first ever California Lottery game, a Scratchers called California Jackpot, first sold on October 3, 1985. Since then, the California Lottery has raised more than $46 billion for public schools across the state.
“From the very beginning, our mission has been to raise supplemental funding explicitly to support schools,” said California Lottery Director Harjinder K. Shergill Chima. “Our dedicated workforce takes a tremendous amount of pride in the work we do every day – all in the name of public education. We are a mission-focused and cause-driven organization, and we want to thank our players and retail partners alike for supporting education right along with us; we couldn’t be successful without them.”
The California Lottery is a self-funded state agency and was created when voters passed a ballot proposition dubbed the California State Lottery Act of 1984, which allows the Lottery to supplement funding for public education through the responsible sale of lottery products.
Now, in the second quarter of Fiscal Year 24-25, the California Lottery is projecting total sales revenues of more than $9 billion this year, with a contribution to public education of more than $2.08 billion. If successful, this would be the fourth straight fiscal year that California Lottery has raised more than $2 billion for California public schools and the 25th consecutive year earning more than $1 billion for public education.