Who runs the Texas Lottery now? The Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation (TDLR). Senate Bill 3070, signed in June 2025, abolished the 33-year-old Texas Lottery Commission effective September 1, 2025 and moved the lottery — along with charitable bingo — under TDLR. The games, the draws and the prizes continue; the agency that runs them, and the rules around couriers and bulk buying, do not.
How Texas got here
Two jackpots did it. In April 2023, a group linked to an overseas betting syndicate bought virtually every number combination in a $95 million Lotto Texas draw — roughly 26 million tickets printed through cooperating retailers over three days — and collected the jackpot. It was legal on its face, but it revealed that the state's own terminals could be turned into a bulk-purchase operation.
Then in February 2025 an $83.5 million Lotto Texas prize was claimed on a ticket bought through a courier app, prompting investigations by the Texas Rangers and the Attorney General, the resignation of the lottery's executive director, and a Sunset Commission review that had lawmakers openly debating whether to abolish the lottery altogether.
They chose a middle path: keep the lottery, kill the commission. SB 3070 transferred operations to TDLR, added restrictions, and set the next sunset review for 2029 — meaning the Texas Lottery's continued existence gets re-litigated then. Litigation over the disputed jackpots is still working through the courts, and the former lottery director appeared in court in August 2026.
What changed for players
- Courier apps are out. Texas moved to ban lottery courier services in early 2025, and Jackpocket suspended its Texas operations. Texas now sits alongside California, Florida, Indiana, Mississippi, Virginia and Wisconsin as a state where couriers are prohibited. Buying in Texas means buying in person, at a licensed retailer. Our courier app comparison tracks which states still allow them.
- No online ticket sales. Texas has no state iLottery, and that did not change with the transfer — see the state-by-state iLottery guide.
- Bulk buying is restricted. The law targets the mass-purchase strategy behind the 2023 draw, including limits on retailer conduct and on printing enormous ticket volumes.
- Oversight and complaints run through TDLR. Retailer licensing, security and player complaints now sit with a general-purpose regulator that also licenses barbers, electricians and tow trucks — a deliberate downgrade from a dedicated commission.
What did not change
Everything a player actually touches. Lotto Texas, Cash Five, Texas Two Step, the Pick 3 and Daily 4 draws, scratch tickets, and national Powerball and Mega Millions sales all run on the same schedules. Draw times, prize structures, claim centers, and the 180-day claim window are unchanged. Winners still claim at retailers for small prizes and at claim centers or by mail for larger ones — the sequence is in how to claim a lottery prize.
Texas also remains one of the best states to win in, tax-wise: there is no state income tax, so only federal tax applies to a Texas prize. The comparison across all states is in lottery tax rates by state, and the anonymity picture — Texas allows anonymity for prizes of $1 million or more — is covered in the state-by-state anonymity guide.
Does the scandal mean the games are rigged?
No, and the distinction matters. Nothing in either Texas episode involved tampering with a draw. The 2023 case was a syndicate exploiting the ability to buy nearly every combination when a jackpot's expected value justified it; the 2025 case was a dispute over whether a courier-purchased ticket should have been sold at all. Both are procurement and oversight failures, not manipulated drawings. For the cases where drawings genuinely were manipulated — and the safeguards that came out of them — see is the lottery rigged?.
Current Texas winning numbers for every game are on our Texas lottery results page, updated within minutes of each draw.
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