Lottery is a form of gambling in which people select numbers and hope to win a prize. Prizes can be a small amount of money or a large sum of money. Lotteries may be run by state governments or private organizations. Many states have laws that require people to pay a fee in order to play a lottery. Those that have no such requirements are illegal. Regardless of the legal status, many states use the proceeds from lotteries to fund public programs and services.

The casting of lots for making decisions and determining fates has a long history in human society. Public lotteries, however, are a much more recent invention. The first recorded lottery was held in 1466 in Bruges, Belgium. Its purpose was to raise money for town repairs and to help the poor.

Most states now have a lottery and almost all of them depend on it for revenue. In most cases, officials don’t make any general policy for managing the lottery; they let the industry evolve and then rely on it to provide them with a steady stream of income. Over time, a lottery becomes a big business in itself and develops specialized constituencies, including convenience store owners; lottery suppliers (whose executives give generous donations to political campaigns); teachers (in those states in which lottery revenues are earmarked for education); etc. The overall result is that state governments become dependent on a kind of gambling they do not control or manage, and that they face pressure to increase the number of games and their prizes.