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This paper analyzes the emergence and success of lotteries in the German-speaking world during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The “fortune pot” was a municipally controlled phenomenon in Germany, fundamentally related to crossbow or harquebus shooting contests. Thanks to a comparison of data from numerous municipal archives, this paper can thus reconstruct how the lottery was adopted and disseminated in Germany during the 1460s and became a trending phenomenon until the late sixteenth century. The article enables us to analyze the economical rationales, since the event had to bail out the prestigious spending of the municipal council, and simultaneously to attract numerous bets. The lottery was not a merely local event, but relied on bets placed by bettors from far away. It was an opportunity for municipal powers to defend the reputation of the city and to reactivate the bonds of solidary and good neighborhood thanks to close collaboration and transparent communication with its partners. The organization of the lottery, from the announcement to the final results, gives us a glimpse of the enthusiasm, or skepticism, of a part of society concerning this urban spectacle and, more broadly, to study the reception and social value of gambling in premodern urban society.