The lottery contest is a best-response potential game

•The n-player lottery contest is shown to admit a best-response potential.•This holds likewise for contest technologies that reflect the possibility of a draw.•In particular, a non-trivial two-player zero-sum game may admit a best-response potential.

It is shown that the n-player lottery contest admits a best-response potential (Voorneveld, 2000). This is true also when the contest technology reflects the possibility of a draw. The result implies, in particular, the existence of a non-trivial two-player zero-sum game that is best-response equivalent to a game with identical payoff functions.