ScratcherStats.com aims to provide lottery enthusiasts and scratcher players with the data tools to make the best choices when standing at the convenience store counter. And you can get this data on remaining prizes for many US states in the same place! Sure, you can look at the data on the official lottery commission websites, but here you get all the stats for each state – we do the math for you, so you can know exactly how many tickets to buy for the best odds of winning a profit.
However, you may have noticed that the map on the home page only shows a limited number of states. Much like with the lottery in general, many states offer scratch-offs while others do not. If they do offer lottery scratch-offs, then most state lottery commissions commit to being transparent and provide players with data on the number of prizes out there. Like casinos, lottery commissions know that players will keep playing if they get information to work with. But some states don’t put enough data for us to calculate the statistics. Some states block us from grabbing that data.
For us to work with the data, we have three requirements:
- The ability to automatically grab the data off the lottery’s website.
- The overall odds of winning a prize, to calculate the total number of tickets issued.
- The number of remaining scratch prizes, to know the currents odds of winning after prizes are claimed.
Here’s three examples of states we couldn’t include on ScratcherStats.com:
No Odds Data – New Jersey
New Jersey is absent from ScratcherStats.com because the New Jersey Lottery Commission does not provide detailed information on the odds of winning for their scratcher games. Without this critical data, it is impossible to calculate the statistics that ScratcherStats.com relies on to provide users with valuable insights. We can’t tell you percent of prizes of the total remaining scratchers, because that calculation requires the odds multiplied by the total number of prizes. You might as well just go directly to the New Jersey Lottery website for what little data they offer.
Missing Data on Remaining Prizes – Colorado
Colorado is another state with incomplete data on the website. Colorado does provide the odds of winning for their scratcher games and the number of prizes at the start of a game. However, the Colorado lottery website doesn’t post updated numbers on remaining scratcher tickets with unclaimed prizes. Without that data, we can’t improve much on what’s already posted on the CO Lottery website. We could only provide a list of the scratcher games with the best odds when the game started, which could have been months or even years earlier.
No Prize Numbers At All – Iowa and Wisconsin
Iowa’s lottery website provides some data on their scratch games, such as the overall odds per game and even the odds per prize. But the site offers neither the number of prizes remaining nor the number of prizes issued at the start of the game, nor even a total number of prizes issued. Thus, there’s no data to calculate scratch game statistics with.
Lottery Data Locked in a JPEG or PDF – Delaware and Pennsylvania
Most lottery commission websites post the data in HTML tables, or within DIVs. Some make the data available within JSON format through API requests. However, Delaware posts their data within a picture. For each scratch off game, you can see the data within a jpeg format picture, like this. Did Delaware post the data for you to see? Yes. But can we easily get it to use for statistical calculations? Not so much. Maybe we’ll figure that out sometime. Likewise, Pennsylvania posts the data on remaining prizes for each scratch-off game in an HTML table, but only for the top six prizes! The rest of the data is in a PDF like this.
Data Gathering Restrictions – South Carolina
South Carolina’s lottery website implemented measures to prevent automated data scraping, making it challenging for websites like ScratcherStats.com to collect the necessary information. This technical obstacle has resulted in South Carolina’s exclusion from the website.
No Lottery Scratchers – Utah, Alabama, Nevada, Alaska, and Hawaii
Utah stands out as a state that does not offer lottery scratchers at all. Blame the legacy of the Church of Latter Day Saints in Utah, or the southern Baptist belt for Alabama. Nevada, with its thriving casino industry, has chosen not to introduce lottery scratchers to avoid competition with its established gaming sector. As a result, there are no scratcher games in Nevada to report statistics for on ScratcherStats.com. Other states that don’t offer the lottery at all include Alaska and Hawaii.
Weak Search Traffic – Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, North Dakota, Maine, Vermont
These states are beautiful, and maybe that’s why Google Trends shows few to none search traffic for lottery scratch games – because people have too many other things to do. No matter whether using “scratchers”, “scratch off”, “scratch games”, these states don’t make the list on the Google Trends’ map. So we’d rather put the effort into data for states where there’s demand for data on the lottery scratchers with the best odds.
States Coming Soon
On a more positive note, ScratcherStats.com is continually working to expand its coverage. States like Michigan, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, and Arkansas are expected to be represented on the website in the near future. The inclusion of these states will broaden the scope of data available to scratcher players and enthusiasts.
Conclusion
While ScratcherStats.com strives to provide comprehensive and up-to-date information on scratcher games across the United States, we’ll never be able to include every state due to the unavailability of data, technical restrictions, or unique state policies. However, the website continues to grow and evolve, with plans to include more states in its coverage, ensuring that scratcher players have access to valuable statistics to enhance their gaming experience.
