Georgia Lottery

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The Georgia Lottery is overseen by the state government of Georgia. Headquartered in Atlanta and run by the Georgia Lottery Corporation, the lottery takes in over US$1 billion yearly. By law, half of the money goes to prizes, one-third to education, and the remainder to operating and marketing the lottery. The education money funds the HOPE Scholarship, and has become a successful model for other states, including the new South Carolina Education Lottery.

Long unconstitutional in a highly conservative U.S. state, a state-run lottery was explicitly allowed in a 1992 constitutional amendment to Article I, Section II, Paragraph VIII of the Georgia State Constitution, approved in a statewide referendum. The GLC was created by a separate bill in 1992 by the Georgia General Assembly and then-governor of Georgia Zell Miller in the Lottery for Education Act (OCGA 50-27). Rebecca Paul, who began the Florida Lottery, then ran the Georgia Lottery for its first decade, before leaving to start up the new Tennessee Lottery in 2004.

The original in-state weekly jackpot game, Lotto Georgia, later merged with two other lotteries to create larger jackpots as Lotto South. Like neighboring Florida, Georgia also has a once-daily Fantasy 5 game. There are also the twice-daily, once on Sunday, Cash 3 and Cash 4 games. It also participates in the multi-state Mega Millions lottery, and has numerous scratch-off games which change frequently. In February 2006, Lotto South ended; its replacement Win For Life does not have a cash option.

In the mid-1990s, Georgia, already offering Powerball, joined The Big Game (now Mega Millions) when it began in 1996. Several days after Georgia began selling The Big Game tickets, it was forced to leave the Multi-State Lottery Association (MUSL), which continues to administer the Powerball game. (In March 2009, it was revealed that Mega Millions and Powerball were pursuing an agreement for Mega Millions members to become allowed to join MUSL, and vice versa. Under this proposal, Georgia could again join Powerball, but without losing Mega Millions.)