ABSTRACT Widening the dominant lens of economic utility as the raison d’etre of lottery purchase, this study introduces experiential values to investigate why the category of scratching off lottery tickets has been fervently savoured by China’s younger generations since the midst of the Covid pandemic. The research variables of time scarcity, non-impulse buying and expenditure on lottery are also factored in the research model to account for the crucial cognitive and conative influences and consequences hereby evoked. Structural modelling outcomes uncover the multiplicity of experiential values constituted by fun, surprise, social interactions and engagement facets, together with full mediating effects of time scarcity and mitigating impacts of lottery expenditure in the positive co-relationships between experiential values and non-impulse buying tendencies. Therefore,this study has convincingly confirmed the fever over scratch-off lottery tickets as the co-product of the endogenous psychological states of the young Chinese lottery buyers at their present life stages,and their subtle internalisations of current economic and social contexts at large. This study also provides empirical suggestions on leveraging lottery leisure experiences and optimising their economic, social and cultural ramifications at large.