A large Mega Millions jackpot grew bigger Wednesday to an estimated $640 million after one other drawing and not using a winner.
No one gained the lottery sport’s high prize Tuesday night time, making it 21 straight drawings with out anybody matching all six numbers. The subsequent drawing shall be Friday night time.
The big jackpot comes lower than two months after the biggest lottery prize ever, a $2.04 billion Powerball prize that was gained Nov. 8 in California. So far, that huge winner hasn’t stepped ahead to assert the prize.
The cause for all the massive prizes is straightforward — lengthy odds guarantee there are few winners and the lengthy streaks of lottery futility permit jackpots to develop ever bigger week after week.
The odds of successful a Mega Millions jackpot is one in 302.6 million.
The marketed jackpot of $640 million is for a winner who opts to be paid with an annuity, doled out by means of annual funds over 29 years. Nearly all winners take the money possibility, with for Friday’s drawing shall be an estimated $328.3 million.
Mega Millions is performed in 45 states in addition to Washington, D.C., and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
In Massachusetts, the enormous jackpots of the final 12 months have fueled gross sales, providing lottery officers a “saving grace” as gross sales in any other case slumped.
After months of sluggish gross sales, the newest fiscal year-to-date determine of $2.55 billion in Mass. Lottery merchandise offered is just about $11.6 million — or one half of 1 proportion level — behind the identical stretch throughout fiscal 12 months 2022, Lottery Interim Executive Director Mark William Bracken informed the Lottery Commission at its assembly Tuesday.
The hole between this 12 months’s gross sales and final 12 months’s has closed significantly up to now couple of months from greater than $60 million reported by means of the tip of September, largely on the power of mega jackpots within the multi-state video games.
In November 2022, the Massachusetts Lottery offered about $58.6 million in Powerball tickets, reflecting $48.9 million greater than November 2021, a roughly sixfold enhance.
The solely different Lottery video games with significant gross sales will increase from November 2021 to November 2022 had been Mega Millions, which offered $4.3 million or 85% extra, and Keno, which offered $1.3 million or 1.1% extra.
Instant tickets, which make up nearly all of all Lottery gross sales, have fared extra poorly. The Lotto offered $11.2 million much less in instantaneous tickets final month than in November 2021, a 3% drop. Since the beginning of fiscal 12 months 2023, the Lotto has offered near $1.63 billion price of instantaneous tickets, which is $87.6 million or 5.1% behind the tempo set throughout the identical interval final 12 months.
Bracken referred to as Powerball and Mega Millions the Lottery’s “saving grace” amid slowdowns in different gross sales.
The Massachusetts lottery additionally launched a brand new $50 scratch ticket. The so-called Billion Dollar Extravaganza goes on sale in February.
Source: www.bostonherald.com”