MARK RALSTON | AFP | Getty Images
At some point, be it Friday night or further afield, someone is going to hit the Mega Millions jackpot.
It probably won’t be you.
With the odds stacked against players matching all six numbers it takes to hit the mother lode, the top prize of the lottery game has reached an estimated $ 970 million for Friday night’s draw. The money option – which most winners prefer over an annuity – is $ 716.3 million (pre-tax). The jackpot is also the third largest in US lottery history.
Friday night’s draw comes just days after another lottery game won a massive amount of money: a ticket bought in Maryland hit Powerball’s $ 731.1 million jackpot ($ 546.8 million cash option), which ranks as the sixth greatest prize ever.
“We know players love big jackpots, and when the numbers are that big, it becomes a national phenomenon,” said Gordon Medenica, Maryland lottery director and chief executive of Mega Millions.
“Everyone wants to dream about what they would do if they won,” said Medenica.
The Mega Millions jackpot has been on the rise since mid-September, when someone scored $ 120 million ($ 95.4 million in cash) and the top prize was reset to $ 20 million. That’s 37 weeks where no one can match all six numbers in biweekly draws, the longest stretch ever without a winner, according to lottery officials.
Each Mega Millions ticket has approximately a 1 in 302 million chance of hitting the jackpot. For Powerball it is slightly better: 1 in 292 million.
Even if you bought several tickets, you wouldn’t move the needle much. To even give yourself a 50-50 chance of hitting the Mega Millions jackpot – that is, the same odds of flipping a coin once – you’d have to buy over 151 million different number combinations. But even then, you couldn’t guarantee that you are the only winner.
More from Personal Finance:
Here is a 12 month roadmap to financial wellbeing
IRS is delaying the start of the tax filing season to Feb. 12
A Ten Years to Ten Years Guide to Retirement Planning
In fact, the largest jackpot in US history – a Powerball prize of $ 1.59 billion in 2016 – was split three ways.
For Friday night’s draw, lottery officials estimate that 40% of all possible number combinations will be played.
Of course you can win in the game without hitting the jackpot. The last Mega Millions draw, which took place on Tuesday evening, brought in nearly 5.2 million winning tickets, according to lottery data. That included two winners of $ 2 million each, 11 winners of $ 1 million each, and 139 winners who took at least $ 10,000.
Once the Mega Millions jackpot is won, it will reset to $ 20 million.