Lottery is a game in which people purchase chances for a prize, usually money. The winning tickets are drawn by random selection and the prize amount depends on the number of tickets purchased. Lotteries are popular with the public and a painless way for governments to raise funds. They can also provide a source of income for the elderly and poor.

The concept of distributing something, such as property or money, by lottery goes back a long way. Moses was instructed to take a census of the Israelites and divide the land among them by lottery in the Old Testament, while Roman emperors used lotteries to give away slaves and other valuables. The modern sense of the word comes from 15th-century Burgundy and Flanders, where towns held public lotteries to raise money for town fortifications or to help the poor. Francis I of France authorized private and public lotteries for profit in many cities between 1520 and 1539.

There are more than a dozen different types of lottery games in the United States. The most common are state-run lotteries that sell tickets to be drawn for a prize, such as cash or merchandise. Some state lotteries offer more than one prize, such as a vehicle or vacation. Privately organized lotteries are also common. They can be found in magazines, newspapers and on the Internet and involve picking numbers to match those selected in a drawing. These games are often promoted as being easy to play, but their odds of winning are not very good.