DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) – The jackpot for the Mega Millions lottery game has grown to nearly $ 1 billion ahead of Friday night’s draw after more than four months without a winner due to bad luck, poor odds and reduced play due in part to the coronavirus pandemic.
It’s only the third time a lottery jackpot has become this big, but a lot has changed since the last time such a big prize was up for grabs in 2018. The odds of winning a jackpot remain the same – incredibly slim – but for a variety of reasons why fewer people are playing Mega Millions or Powerball, the two lottery games on offer across most of the country.
And even when the massive Mega Millions prize and $ 731.1 million Powerball jackpot won on Wednesday by a single ticket sold in Maryland kick-started sales for the games, Gordon Medenica, the director of Maryland, to, “We’re not out of the woods yet.”
Medenica acknowledged that sales were dramatically lower before the pandemic, with sales increasing even further in the spring and summer.
After peaking in October 2018, Medenica said sales of the major lottery games fell by about 50%, sparking talks among lottery officials about jackpot fatigue. Mega Millions and Powerball sales continued to decline after the virus struck along with other lottery games, but while scratch cards and other instant games rebounded strongly later in the year, national game sales remained dying.
In response to the declining sales, officials have updated national games to reduce starting jackpots from $ 40 million to $ 20 million and changed the rules about guaranteed minimum raises between draws. The moves made sense for tax purposes, but they slowed down jackpots, pushing sales further, as evidenced by the record 37 draws without a winner needed to reach the current Mega Millions jackpot which is still a lot less than the all-time highs.
“That’s why it takes so many reels to reach a high jackpot level,” said Medenica.
What hasn’t changed are the odds.
Due to their design, Mega Millions and Powerball are relatively generous in awarding small dollar prizes and lottery officials boast that there is about a one in 24 chance of winning. But to generate massive jackpots, officials have to be absolutely stingy about paying jackpots.
It’s hard to fathom how unlikely it is to beat the odds of one in 292.2 million for Powerball or one in 302.5 million for Mega Millions.
To get an idea of your chances, Steven Bleiler, a professor of mathematics and statistics at Portland State University, said that people have a pool 40 feet (12.2 meters) wide, 120 feet (36.6 meters) long and 5 feet (1.5 meters). deep, filled to the brim with M & M’s, only one of which is green. To win, all a player has to do is jump in blindfolded and wade around until he finds that one green candy.
Andrew Swift, a math professor at the University of Nebraska-Omaha, put it this way: Your odds of grabbing two oysters and finding a pearl in each are about twice the chance of winning either lottery jackpot.
Still someone always wins in the end, and it happened again after Wednesday night’s Powerball draw when a single ticket was sold in a supermarket in the small community of Lonaconing, Maryland, all six hit songs. The winner can receive an annuity of $ 716.3 to be paid over 30 years or a cash prize of $ 546.8 million.
What comes next is unclear. Some states are counting on growth in online games, but while the 10 states that allow purchases on computers and phone apps are seeing rising sales, such purchases remain a relatively small percentage of total revenue.
“The current role has revived the game as it was designed,” said Medenica. “Whether we will continue to consider making changes or not remains to be seen.”
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