The North Carolina Education Lottery has been giving a steadily smaller share of its money to education, a new audit shows, even as it sets new records for sales.<\/p>\n
Monday’s report<\/a> from a private auditing company, contracted by State Auditor Dave Boliek’s office to analyze lottery spending, found that just 16 cents from every $1 spent on lottery tickets or other games went toward public school funding in the 2025 fiscal year.<\/p>\n Money from the lottery has traditionally gone toward funding school salaries, construction, transportation and college scholarships.<\/p>\n When North Carolina first created the lottery in 2005, state law required 35% of proceeds to go toward supporting public education in the state. But the state legislature later turned that from a requirement to a suggestion. And in recent years, the share of lottery sales going toward education has grown steadily smaller.<\/p>\n In 2023, schools got 23% of lottery sales, the audit found. In 2024 that had dropped to 20%, followed by a drop in 2025 to 16%.<\/p>\n The audit showed the following:<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\tIn 2024, the lottery did $5.376 billion in sales and gave $1.07 billion back to the state.In 2025, the lottery did $6.586 billion in sales and gave $1.05 billion back to the state.So from 2024 to 2025, North Carolinians increased their spending on the lottery by 22.5%. But the amount of lottery money going to education dropped by 1.9%.<\/p>\n “North Carolinians have a reasonable expectation that if the Education Lottery\u2019s ticket sales go up, money going toward our public schools would increase as well,” Boliek said in a news release. “At first glance, these numbers raise a lot of questions.”<\/p>\n The amount of money the lottery has spent on its own expenses, such as salaries and advertising, has remained relatively flat, the audit found.<\/p>\n So the main reason education is getting a smaller share of sales is because of one main factor: Lottery players are winning more.<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\tThe lottery responds<\/p>\n