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How lottery sales are split: Korea and Japan compared
"What share of sales does a Korean lottery pay back?" has a one-number answer. "How does that compare with other countries?" does not, because each country counts its shares differently. Some include tax and commission under "return"; others quote prizes only. This page compares Korea and Japan using sources close to the official, and leaves other countries blank in the table, saying why. Matching definitions first is the heart of the exercise.
First, match the categories
Lottery sales usually divide five ways.
- Prizes: the share that returns to players.
- Public-purpose allocation: funds or local-government proceeds used for purposes set by law.
- Tax (lottery duty or levy): in some countries the state takes a set share of sales directly.
- Sales commission: the share paid to retailers.
- Operating and promotion costs: issuing, systems, advertising and so on.
Countries merge or split these differently, so placing identically named columns side by side invites mistakes. Korea's "Lottery Fund", for example, means all proceeds left after prizes and distribution costs. Japan's "proceeds" are similar in that they finance public works by the issuing authorities, but whether they are on the same basis needs separate checking.
The two countries we verified
| Item | Korea: Lotto 6/45 | Japan: lotteries overall |
|---|---|---|
| Prizes | 50% | 46.5% |
| Public-purpose funding | 43.6% (Lottery Fund) | 36.2% (proceeds) |
| Sales commission, operations and similar | 6.4% (retailer commission 5.4% + other 1.0%) | 17.4% (costs and commission) |
| Average return per 1,000 units, before tax | KRW 500 | JPY 465 |
The Korean figures come from Donghaeng Lottery's Lotto 6/45 page. The Japanese figures are read from the pie chart in a Tokyo Metropolitan Government Bureau of Finance document made in August 2025 ("Do you know how lottery money is used?"). It shows prizes 46.5%, proceeds 36.2% and costs and commission 17.4%, and explains that proceeds are allocated to issuing local governments, Tokyo among them, to fund public works. The same document states that about JPY 60.4 billion of Tokyo public works are planned for fiscal 2025.
That is as far as the table reads. Korea's Lotto has a prize share 3.5 percentage points higher, and Japan's share for sales and operating costs is larger. A buyer gets back KRW 35 more per KRW 1,000 on Korean Lotto. But the table compares different products: the Korean column is one game, the Japanese column appears to be the Tokyo document's average across lotteries, and the document does not state the fiscal year or the coverage, so we mark the Japanese figure partly verified. Prize shares can differ by product.
Why the same ratio can be read differently
- Is a higher prize share always better? The average return to buyers is higher, but the top prize can be smaller. Depending on how the prize pool is split across prize levels, the same 50% can have a very different shape (the first prize supplies nearly half of Korean Lotto's average return).
- Where the tax sits. Some countries deduct a levy from sales; others tax winners' income. A buyer's net share cannot be read from a ratio table alone. In Korea, income tax and local income tax are withheld from the prize (tax guide).
- What "public good" means. Korea collects into the Lottery Fund and then splits between statutory funds and Lottery Fund projects. In Japan proceeds go to the issuing local governments, which spend them on public works. The same label hides different stages and different places for the money to go.
- Time and product. A yearly average differs from one game's structure. Each lottery product has its own structure, and ratios change with reforms.
Countries we could not verify
These cells are left empty on purpose. We could have filled them with numbers from news or secondary sources, but we hold to the rule of not using values that were not cross-checked against the original.
- United Kingdom (National Lottery): the Gambling Commission publishes funds raised for good causes by quarter; for January–March 2024 (Q4 2023 to 2024) it reports £449.0 million. But that page does not break each £1 into prizes, lottery duty, retailers and operator, and the official page that would confirm such a split refused our request. We saw sources giving the good-causes share anywhere between 23p and 28p, but could not confirm from an original which year each applies to.
- United States (Powerball, Mega Millions and others): lotteries are run by individual states and the use of proceeds varies; we did not verify the percentage in any state.
- Other countries (Australia, Italy, Spain, France and others): not verified.
- Japan: the chart on the Ministry of Internal Affairs page is an image and we could not read its text reliably. The Japanese figures above come from the Tokyo document.
What comes back for the same spending
Turn the prize-share difference into amounts spent. Units are each country's own currency and are not converted into each other.
| Country | Prize share | Average return per 1,000,000 units | Average loss |
|---|---|---|---|
| Korea (Lotto 6/45) | 50% | KRW 500,000 | KRW 500,000 |
| Japan (all lotteries, Tokyo document) | 46.5% | JPY 465,000 | JPY 535,000 |
In either country, on average more than half of what is spent does not come back. The 3.5-point gap shows up as an average difference of 35,000 units on 1,000,000 spent, but that average is dominated by a few large wins. Most buyers end up far from the average.
Five checks when reading another country's figures
- Scope: one product's structure, or an average over all lotteries?
- Date: which year, and has the system been reformed since?
- Terms: what do "return", "proceeds" and "fund" include (tax? commission?).
- Where the tax is: taken from sales, or from prizes?
- Source: an operator or government original, or a secondary summary?
A comparison table that skips these five checks may look tidy and still be wrong. That is why this page leaves the United Kingdom and the United States empty: for them we could not confirm source and terms against the originals.
The claim deadline is part of the structure too
As practical for a buyer as the allocation ratios is the deadline for claiming. The Tokyo document says winning tickets expire after one year and that prizes cannot be collected after that. In Korea the operator's guide gives one year from the start of payment for the round, with expired prizes going to the Lottery Fund, as recorded in this site's tax guide evidence table. The article number of the Korean one-year rule was not confirmed, so it is partly verified. That unclaimed prizes feed public funds is confirmed for Korea; how Japan treats them was not verified here.
Limits and summary
- The two columns differ in product coverage (one Korean game, versus the Tokyo document's overall average for Japan).
- The Japanese values were read from a pie chart in the Tokyo document, which does not state the year.
- A prize share is an average return to buyers, and an average is heavily shaped by rare events such as the first prize.
- This page does not judge which country has the "better" structure. How efficiently the public share is spent, or how appropriate its uses are, is outside its scope.
In short, Korean Lotto returns half of sales and collects 43.6% for the Lottery Fund (Where does Korean lottery money go?), while Japanese lotteries, on the Tokyo document, are 46.5% prizes, 36.2% local-government proceeds and 17.4% costs and commission. To compare with another country, first read the original to see which items it counts and how. Formats and odds by country are in the Lottery Explorer.
LottoFlick is independent and not an official lottery operator. Numbers are random and cannot be predicted.
Sources and verification
- Donghaeng Lottery: Lotto 6/45 sales allocation (50 / 43.6 / 5.4 / 1.0) — verified
- Tokyo Metropolitan Government, Bureau of Finance, "Do you know how lottery money is used?" (document created 2025-08-19): prizes 46.5%, proceeds 36.2%, costs and commission 17.4% — partly verified · figures read from the PDF's chart text; the document does not state the fiscal year of the shares or whether they cover all ticket types
- UK Gambling Commission, funds raised for good causes, Q4 2023 to 2024 (£449.0 million; no per-£1 breakdown on the page) — verified
- Japan Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, lottery overview page (chart is an image; text could not be read reliably) — not verified