Powerball numbers are drawn after delay, as record jackpot rises to $2.04 billion
The odds are long, the players are big, and the prizes are huge — and now, as more than $6.5 billion goes to the biggest jackpot in history, lottery officials could have a little more time to figure out their next big move.
The odds are long, the players are big, and the prizes are huge — and now, as more than $6.5 billion goes to the biggest jackpot in history, lottery officials could have a little more time to figure out their next big move.
Lotto officials said Wednesday that the new prize total was in the top three for which they have ever reported, after pulling out the decimal point and adding the $5.5 billion payout to the $2.04 billion total.
That’s double the jackpot won by California lottery winner William Jones, whose $4.5 billion prize was announced in 1996 and was matched by the California State Lottery three years later, which paid the top prize in any single day in history.
The new record for the most bets in a single day — $2.04 billion — made the new prize total one-fourth of the $8 billion in bets the $2 billion jackpot at Mega Millions had on its opening day last year.
“It’s a good time to be a player,” said Bill Frist, executive director of the National Association of Lottery Players. “Now we’ve got a big enough prize at this point that people are thinking: ‘Are there still winners out there?”‘
The $2 billion, plus $1.5 billion are the largest single jackpot prizes ever offered in the U.S., according to the National Retail Federation. Since the U.S. was created, the record two-day prize for a single prize has been $1.5 billion in 1993.
The new odds for the top prize are 3 in 100,000 for the regular first-prize ticket and a whopping 1,000,000 for the “Mega Millions — $5.5 billion” ticket, which includes the $2.04 billion payout