By Patricia McQueen
Published February 18, 2025
Lotteries spend a lot of time on game design. After all, it’s important to resonate with players throughout the year. Yet the holiday season is special. Not only do players choose games they enjoy themselves, it’s a time of responsible gift-giving. Lotteries pull out all the stops to provide a selection of games that serve both purposes.
North American lotteries reported offering a total of 241 holiday instant games in 2024, about the same number as the previous year.
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There was some movement at the higher price points as lotteries are still exploring the market. Among the lotteries responding to our request for a review of their experiences, a few mentioned softening of the results at $20 or even $10, while others cited them as their best sellers.
No lottery has yet to offer a $50 holiday-specific game, but four offered a $30 holiday game in 2024: Georgia, Ohio, Oregon and Western Canada Lottery Corp. That was one more than the previous year, when a $30 game was offered by Ohio, Pennsylvania and WCLC.
At the $20 price point, 25 lotteries offered a total of 26 games, two more than in 2023. The Kentucky Lottery was the only one to offer two games at the price point. One was actually a holiday gift pack with four games and a guaranteed winner among them. Connecticut, Delaware and Minnesota added a $20 holiday game this past season, while Arizona and Nebraska dropped their holiday game at the price point.
38 lotteries offered a total of 44 $10 holiday games, unchanged from the previous year. Atlantic Lottery, Iowa, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Vermont and WCLC each offered two at this price point.
Across all price points, $5 games remain the largest group, with 53 reported for the 2024 holiday season. Only Arkansas and Puerto Rico didn’t offer a $5 game, and Mississippi’s only holiday offering was at the $5 price point (they didn’t offer any holiday-specific games the previous year).
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For the first time since we’ve been tracking holiday price points, the number of $2 games edged $1 games in the U.S. and Canada combined – there were 44 at $2 and 43 at $1.
As for $1 games, 10 lotteries did not offer games at that price point in 2024: Atlantic Lottery, Loto-Québec, and lotteries in Georgia, Iowa, Minnesota, Mississippi, New York, Oklahoma, Ontario and Puerto Rico. Kansas added back a $1 game in 2024 after dropping the price point in 2023.
The $3 price point is used in fewer lotteries, with 22 games offered in 2024 across 19 lotteries. They are most popular in Canada, with two each offered in British Columbia, Québec and Ontario.
Multi-game packs were offered by six lotteries in 2024. Long a popular product for some Canadian lotteries, American lotteries have been slow to embrace the concept. Atlantic Lottery offered a $25 version with a guaranteed win. At $20, Kentucky, Ontario and WCLC also offered a guaranteed win in their packs. BCLC and North Carolina also offered a $20 pack, although without a guaranteed win (but with better odds than all other games).
Family games remain popular, and proponents of these games like the marketing simplicity and brand awareness, especially during the holiday season. Offering only one family of games were Louisiana, Maine, Nebraska, Rhode Island and Virginia. Adding a non-family game to a holiday portfolio of mostly family games were Florida, Massachusetts, Minnesota and North Carolina.
Georgia continued its recent tradition of offering a 2-game family at $10 and $20, and in 2024, its lower price point games ($2 and $5) were a different family (Frenzy), with a $30 game added to that family as well.
Blowout or loaded-prize games are popular year-round, but are gaining use during the holidays. No less than 16 lotteries offered at least one holiday game with blowout or loaded prize tiers. Florida, Maine and Minnesota even offered families. Florida’s Holiday Blowout family included $1, $2, $5 and $10 price points, Maine offered a $1 Holiday $100s, a $2 Holiday $200s and a $5 Holiday $500s, and in the same vein, Minnesota offered a $5 Holiday $500s, a $10 Holiday $1,000s, and a $20 Holiday $2,000s. Massachusetts’s four-game Merry & Bright included a $10 blowout “special edition” version.
Elsewhere, loaded or blowout games were offered at $1 (in Kansas and New Mexico), $5 (Arizona, Kansas, Illinois, Kentucky and Wisconsin), $10 (Colorado, Indiana, Kentucky, New Hampshire, North Carolina and Vermont), and $20 (Maryland).
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Planning With a Purpose
Lotteries typically start planning for the next holiday season when the dust has barely settled from the last one. That’s no surprise – for most lotteries, holiday games are critically important, and they are supported by some of the biggest campaigns and promotional efforts of the year.
The Nebraska Lottery offered us a look into their instant ticket planning process, which involves year-round weekly meetings about instant games, discussing inventory flow, game planning and promotions. Participating are the Lottery’s director, the products, marketing, finance and key accounts managers, and the legal counsel. Also attending may be representatives of the Lottery’s primary vendor IGT, advertising agency Smith Kroeger and research firm People Principles.
Looking for ideas that could resonate in Nebraska, Products Manager Brian Griesenbrock continually reviews games (and their prize structures) offered by lotteries around the country, and regularly consults with the Lottery’s vendor partner, IGT. This is especially true for holiday games. Planning for the next holiday season, which for Nebraska has started in mid-October in recent years, is added to the weekly meetings beginning in February. As with some regular games, holiday games are always considered together with possible promotions, so there is always clear, simple messaging.
“We have specific play styles that seem to be preferred with our players, so we’ll usually try to incorporate the most popular attributes into our holiday games,” says Griesenbrock. “Our advertising agency also helps us brainstorm what the related promotion will be.” The 2024 holiday promotion was Yuletide Ride, with a chance to win a Ford Bronco Sport via entries of non-winning Lucky Star holiday tickets.
For the last three years, Nebraska has offered a family of games for the holidays, using multipliers to distinguish the price points. Families contribute to the Lottery’s overall goals of clean, simple messaging. For 2022, it was Holiday Wishes at $1, $5 and $10; in 2023, it was Holiday Classic at $1, $5, $10 and $20, and for the 2024 season, it was Lucky Star at $1, $5 and $10. While Lucky Star was one of the holiday concepts presented by IGT, Griesenbrock often encourages the Lottery’s own design team to come up with original ideas. He also regularly communicates with his counterparts at other lotteries, especially when he sees interesting games, and often asks what they might have done differently. For Nebraska, the whole process is not that much different for holiday games than it is for all other games. Regardless of the season, it’s about trying to find games that players enjoy playing.
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On to the Details
Once again, lotteries have shared their strategies and their insights from the recent holiday season. We asked earlier than in recent years, and also streamlined the questions. For more manageable browsing, we’ve divided their edited responses into two sections, and grouped the three most detailed responses (New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and Virginia, which also have common cross-product elements) in a third section. As always, we thank the participating lotteries for their insights into the all-important holiday season!