Colorado Lottery’s third-best year: Where the $181.4 million goes

By Shaina Cole | Contributing Writer, Rocky Mountain Voice

The Colorado Lottery sold $887,851,993 in tickets in FY25-26, the third-highest sales year in its history, and raised $181,424,926 for parks, recreation and conservation programs across the state.

Sales rose $59,992,274, or 7.2 percent, over the prior year, according to the financial audit released Oct. 19 by the Office of the State Auditor.

Scratch tickets carried most of the sales. Scratch reached $613,527,126, an all-time record, up 2.3 percent. The Lottery said national scratch sales fell about 0.5 percent while Colorado’s grew, and that Colorado ranked seventh among all U.S. lotteries for scratch growth.

The Lottery credited its market research and new game launches, including Orange Cash, a scratch game it developed with the Denver Broncos, and a National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation game.

Most of the year’s growth came from jackpot games. Jackpot sales reached $274.3 million, up $46.1 million, or 20.2 percent, helped by three jackpots above $800 million. The Lottery phased out Lucky For Life and launched Millionaire For Life, which brought in $12,800,810 in its first year.

Prize expense totaled $578,015,873, or 65.1 percent of sales. Colorado retailers earned $59,310,435 in commissions and another $8,192,920 in bonuses.

Contract auditor Forvis Mazars reported no new recommendations and no prior recommendations outstanding. The auditors identified no material weaknesses in internal control and no instances of noncompliance, while noting that weaknesses or deficiencies they did not identify may still exist.

The Lottery spent $710,560,352 against a final budget of $775,084,729, finishing 8.32 percent under. It filled 105.5 of the 106.5 full-time-equivalent positions it was appropriated.

How the money splits

Voters wrote the split into the state constitution. Forty percent of net proceeds goes to the Conservation Trust Fund and 10 percent to the Division of Parks and Outdoor Recreation, now the Division of Parks and Wildlife. The remainder goes to the Great Outdoors Colorado Trust Fund, or GOCO, up to a cap.

That cap was set at $35 million in 1992 dollars and is adjusted every year against the Denver-area consumer price index. For FY25-26 it worked out to nearly $88 million, up from $86 million the year before.

GOCO’s share came to $87,989,409, which reached the cap. The Conservation Trust Fund’s share was $72,569,968. The Division of Parks and Outdoor Recreation’s share was $18,142,493.

Because the cap was reached, $2,723,056 spilled past GOCO into a second distribution. Lawmakers created that order in 2021 and revised it last year in HB25-1215, which the Senate passed 32-3 and the House cleared 48-17 on its final vote.

The audit describes the order as the first $4 million to the Outdoor Equity Fund, the next $3 million to the Public School Capital Construction Assistance Fund, the next $750,000 to a new outdoor recreation economic development fund, and a split of anything beyond that.

The spillover stopped at the first step. All $2,723,056 went to the Outdoor Equity Fund, and the school capital construction fund drew no distribution. It drew none in FY24-25 either, when proceeds fell short of the cap and nothing spilled over at all.

Where it lands locally

Of the three, the Conservation Trust Fund is the one that goes directly to local governments.

The Department of Local Affairs, or DOLA, lists more than 480 eligible local governments and pays them quarterly. They are counties, cities, towns and Title 32 special districts that provide park and recreation services. State law limits the money to acquiring, developing and maintaining new conservation sites, or to capital improvements and maintenance for recreation on any public site.

Payouts from the fund run on the calendar year, so they do not line up with the Lottery’s fiscal-year distribution. DOLA sent $70,679,512 to local governments in 2025. It lists the per capita share at $12.03.

Two wrinkles shape what any one entity gets.

Special districts receive half a per capita share, and the county or municipality they sit inside keeps the other half. The population figures also run two years behind, so the July 2024 estimates prepared by the State Demography Office set the checks that go out in 2026.

RMV counted 152 special districts on the estimates list.

South Suburban Park and Recreation District is the largest of them at 155,074 residents. Apex Park and Recreation District follows at 140,022, then Hyland Hills Park and Recreation District at 125,458, Highlands Ranch Metropolitan District at 104,419 and Foothills Park and Recreation District at 92,588.

The range below the big districts is wide.

The six Meadows metropolitan districts run from 540 residents to 6,370. McArthur Ranch Metropolitan Recreation District has 321 residents.

Each entity files an annual report with the Division of Local Government showing what state money it holds and what it has committed or spent.

The 2026 per capita rate has not been posted yet. The population that determines it already has.