Ask Away

92 cents of every lottery dollar stayed right here in Atlantic Canada. 

Every year, Atlantic Lottery returns 100 per cent of our profit to our shareholders, the four provincial governments of Atlantic Canada. We returned $492.2 million in profit to the four Atlantic provinces in 2022-23, helping to fund services like health care, education and infrastructure in the region. Here’s how the profits were shared:

• Nova Scotia: $160.4 Million
• New Brunswick: $153.8 Million
• Newfoundland and Labrador:  $148.5 Million
• Prince Edward Island: $29.3 Million

But our impact in the region doesn’t stop there. From awarding prizes to our players, partnering with independent retailers and creating direct and indirect employment across the region, we’re helping to build a stronger Atlantic Canada while remaining committed to promoting healthy play.

We paid out $440.1 million in prizes to our players, and $121.7 million in commissions to our almost 4,000 retailers. Plus, we employ more than 642 Atlantic Canadians who spend their salaries here, and we contribute indirectly to more than 8,300 other jobs and $1.9 billion in economic activity. We also pay corporate taxes every year, contributing additional funds to government in support of essential services for Atlantic Canadians.

People across Canada buy tickets for Lotto Max and 6/49. But whether you live on West Coast, East Coast or anywhere in between, your odds of winning the top prize on these games are exactly the same. 

That’s how the odds of winning work—everybody has the same chance. The odds of where a winning ticket will come from are a bit different. The reason some provinces have more top prize wins is because they have a larger population (and more people) buying tickets. Ontario and Quebec for example represent more than half the total Lotto Max and Lotto 6/49 sales, and the greater the percentage of tickets sold in any area, the greater the chances a winning ticket would come from there. But even though Atlantic Canada has a smaller percentage of sales on these games, we still see our fair share of big winners every year too!

Winning numbers used to be drawn at random using a ball machine. These days, Lotto 6/49 and Lotto Max draws, as well as Daily Grand, Bucko, Salsa Bingo, Atlantic 49, TAG, and Maxmillions, are performed with an electronic draw machine (EDM) that uses a random number generator (RNG) to randomly generate the winning numbers. For guaranteed prize draws, EDMs are also used to generate a winner from all the selections that have been sold.

As Atlantic Canada’s only provider of responsible and regulated gaming, we take our responsibility to ensure the fairness and integrity of the draws seriously. That’s why we use third-party experts to test and certify the RNG software used in our draws. This continues to ensure unbiased and unpredictable numbers are generated every time.