Official lottery is the term used for a type of gambling where a state or private entity is responsible for organizing, advertising and conducting a drawing to determine the winners. The winner(s) may receive a prize in the form of money or goods. Some lotteries award prizes based on the number or symbol chosen by bettors. Prizes can also be determined by a random selection of numbers or symbols on tickets that have been thoroughly mixed (typically by shaking or tossing). Many modern lotteries use computers to record the ticket information and choose winners.

In the United States, lotteries have long been a popular source of public funding. Some of the nation’s earliest church buildings were built with lottery funds, and Harvard, Yale, Brown, and Princeton owe part of their origins to New York state lotteries. In the early 1800s, enslaved Denmark Vesey won a local lottery and used his winnings to buy his freedom in Charleston, South Carolina. Religious and moral sensibilities, however, started to turn against gambling in general beginning around this time.

Several modern states offer state-sponsored lotteries to raise money for a variety of purposes. These include education, health care, and social services, as well as infrastructure projects like roads, bridges, and schools. While there is little doubt that lottery proceeds are important sources of public revenue, critics argue that they are regressive, meaning that lower income Americans spend more on these games than wealthier American. In addition, the marketing and selling of lottery games in poor communities leads people to believe that it is a fast way to build wealth, which is not true.