How much does a convenience store make from selling lottery tickets.

Have you ever wondered whether all those little corner stores make any money out of lottery ticket sales? Me too. Well, someone has done already the hard work for me. 

It seems that, in Ontario at least, retailers make 5% on every online sale (which I take to mean Lotto 649 and Lotto Max sales through the electronic terminals) and 8% on offline sales (scratch cards?) In addition, they also make money when a ticket they sell wins: a 3% bonus on any in-store online prize redemption if under $200, and 2% on online prize redemptions under $300. Then there are prizes for selling winning tickets: 0.15% for a winning ticket of $1,000, 0.25% for a $500,000 win, 0.4% on a win of $250,000, and 0.01% on tickets with a value of $10,000, $25,000, $50,000 and $100,000 (these percentages don't make much logical sense to me, but that's what it says). But there's more: for selling a First Prize-winning ticket, a retailer earns $1,000 plus $100 for each time the previous jackpot was not won, with $500 for a Second Prize-winning ticket.

So, it's complicated, but you can see why so many stores are unterested in selling lottery tickets. Plus, as far as I can see, there do not seem to be any costs associated with being a re-seller or hosting an electronic lottery terminal, so no risks to speak of. I don't know, but I have a suspicion that they probably make more from lottery tickets than they do from selling candy, chips and pop.