Lottery is a game where people buy tickets for a chance to win a prize. The prizes range from cash to goods and services. People can win the jackpot by selecting all of the winning numbers or win smaller prizes by matching fewer of the numbers. People who play lotteries do so for fun, but some also use it as a way to try and solve financial problems.

The first recorded lotteries were in the Low Countries in the 15th century, where they were used to raise money for town fortifications and poor relief. The word “lottery” is probably derived from Middle Dutch loterie, which itself might be a calque on Middle French loterie, meaning the action of drawing lots.

In modern times, lottery games are often organized by states to raise money for government projects. The state usually creates a monopoly to run the lottery and then sets up a commission or other public corporation to manage it. The commission starts with a small number of games and, under pressure for additional revenues, progressively expands the lottery over time.

Lotteries are often promoted as a painless source of revenue for governments, with the argument that players voluntarily spend their money on lottery tickets, rather than having it extracted by force from them in the form of taxes. But the evidence suggests that lottery spending is regressive and that states often end up with a dependency on lottery revenues that they cannot control.