The overall odds on a scratch-off barely predict how much money a game actually returns back to the players

Overall odds are the one number every scratch-off puts on the back of the ticket, and they are the number most players use to compare games. Across the around 3,000 active US games we score, those odds have almost no relationship with how much money a game actually returns back to the players.

The correlation, price by price

A correlation of zero would mean no relationship at all. These numbers range from +0.13 to -0.11, so there is very little connection between a game's overall odds and how much it pays back. Among $10 games, better published odds tell you almost nothing about whether the payout is higher.

The spread makes that easier to see. Active $10 games range from 40.1% to 87.5% payout, and games with similar overall odds can land almost anywhere in that range.

Why the relationship looks real until you check

Line up every game in the country and a pattern does appear. Tickets with odds better than 1 in 3 average a 77.1% payout, and tickets worse than 1 in 4.5 average a 66.3% payout. It looks like a clean trend and price causes both. Expensive tickets have better odds and better payouts, cheap tickets have worse of each, and lumping all prices together produces a relationship that belongs entirely to the price tag. Hold price constant, as the table above does, and it evaporates. This is a textbook confound, and it is the reason odds-based ticket comparisons are so often wrong.

What the odds actually measure

Overall odds describe how frequently a ticket wins anything, counting every prize tier including free tickets. Since 39.6% of all printed prizes are exactly the ticket price (free ticket), a large share of the wins those odds promise are the money you put in. A game can post excellent odds by printing enormous numbers of break-even prizes while returning very little overall, and several do. Payout percentage answers the different question of how much of the money comes back.

One number that does move together with price

The confound is easy to see once the price ladder is laid out. Tickets get better on both measures as they get dearer: $1 games average 61.9% payout with odds of 1 in 4.65, while $30 games average 77.3% with odds of 1 in 3.43. Anyone comparing a $30 ticket against a $1 ticket will find that the better odds came with the better payout, and will reasonably conclude the two are linked.

The conclusion breaks the moment both tickets cost the same, which is the only comparison a player standing at a counter actually makes. Choosing between two $10 games, the odds line is close to useless.

The pair that makes it obvious

Oregon's One Word Crossword has the best published odds of any top-rated game in the country at 1 in 2.77, and returns 72.1%. Ohio's Millionaire Blowout has slightly worse odds at 1 in 2.73 and returns 81.7%. Nearly ten points of difference in the money, with the odds line looking near-identical on the back of both tickets.

Both are excellent games and both are in our national top ten. The point is only that the odds figure did not tell you which was which. Payout percentage and remaining top prizes are on every game page, and the ValueScore™ rankings combine them.