BOSTON (SHNS) - The Mass. Lottery is seeing "strong sales this holiday season" for scratch tickets, helping the agency close the gap with last year's sales and profit levels as officials look ahead to changes in 2025. The Lottery sold $570.6 million worth of its products in November, a $14.5 million or 2.6% increase compared to November 2023. Scratch ticket sales, which account for about two-thirds of all Lottery sales, were up $12.1 million or 3.3%, Executive Director Mark William Bracken told the Lottery Commission on Tuesday. The Lottery turned an estimated profit of $125.5 million last month, a big increase over November 2023's $74.1 million thanks in part to a $67.4 million decrease in scratch ticket grand prizes claimed this year compared to last. Lottery sales are down $99.1 million or 3.9% through the first five months of fiscal 2025, with a $108.7 million decrease in sales of Powerball ($76.2 million) and Mega Millions ($32.5 million) more than offsetting sales growth in Keno and other products. Scratch ticket sales were down $3.2 million or 0.2% through November, but Bracken said there has been "sales this holiday season." "So, hopefully, come the new year we might be turning that red into a black at the next commission meeting," he said, referring to the color-coded chart of sales by product type. "No jinxing." The Lottery could also be facing cost pressures in 2025 Bracken told commissioners. As the commission took one in a series of votes to approve contracts worth more than $16 million, Comptroller William McNamara asked if the Lottery is "starting to see ... the inflationary pressures in the economy flowing through." Bracken said the Lottery sees the greatest impact of inflation in the prices for "anything that involves paper -- our bet slips, our terminal paper, and especially our instant ticket purchases -- because those are just strictly kind of pass through" costs. "We'll be watching what happens come the new year, given the recent announcements of upwards to 30% tariffs happening, being levied against Canada. A lot of the paper that these companies uses come from Canada and come across border, so we could be seeing some significant increases if, in fact, tariffs are implemented like it has been said that they will be by the incoming president," he said. "So things we're looking at that could drastically change some of our operation, our budget, right from the start, if, if our cost is going up 30% on paper products, especially on instant tickets." The commission prepared for another 2025 change Tuesday, authorizing Bracken to amend regulations for the Mega Millions multi-state jackpot draw game. Starting in April, the base price for a Mega Millions ticket will jump from $2 to $5, the odds will change to make it "a smidge" easier for players to hit the jackpot, and lower-tier prize amounts will be increased, Bracken said. "It is now going to be differentiated between the Powerball game. Right now, Mega Millions and Powerball are, for all intents and purposes, the exact same game just drawn on different nights with a different set of balls," Bracken said. He added, "The prizes are going to be much larger handing out, especially at all of our lower tiers, which is something that the players really like. It helps the churn. It provides more small wins, but these small wins will be larger than the players are currently seeing." It's the second price adjustment since the first Mega Millions ticket was sold more than 20 years ago, according to Mega Millions game officials. Since Mega Millions launched in 2002, it has produced six winners of billion-dollar jackpots and an average of three millionaires per week since the last game change in 2017.