The estimated combined jackpots of the Powerball and Mega Millions lotteries have breached the $1 billion-mark pre-tax ahead of Friday’s drawing for the latter.
Powerball’s jackpot has hit an estimated $590 million, a roughly $44 million increase that followed the lottery not drawing numbers on Wednesday resulting in a grand prize-winning ticket. The Mega Millions jackpot has stood at $427 million since Wednesday, bringing the combined total to $1.017 billion.
The one-time payout value of the two jackpots correspondingly totaled $525.4 million as of Thursday, consisting of $304.8 million from Powerball and $220.6 million from Mega Millions.
Powerball said 33 back-to-back drawings that haven’t yielded a grand prize winner have contributed to the jackpot reaching a level just shy of its 10th largest, $590.5 million in 2013. The lottery’s largest, valued $2.05 billion, happened in late 2022, it said.
People lined up to play Powerball lottery at a 7-Eleven store in Milpitas, California, United States on November 7, 2022. (Tayfun Coskun/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images / Getty Images)
April 19 marked the most recent time someone has won Powerball’s jackpot. In that instance, the ticket brought the lucky person, located in Ohio, a windfall worth $252.6 million if they chose the annuitized prize receipt option.
On Wednesday, the lottery had three winners of $1 million prizes in three different states, with $9 million to get doled out overall to various players with lucky tickets.
Mega Millions players will have the next opportunity to win a jackpot with Friday’s drawing at 11 p.m. ET.
That lottery has similarly not disbursed the jackpot since April.
In that month, a winning ticket for the jackpot was drawn on two separate occasions. The one on April 14 won an estimated $483 million haul, while the other on April 18 was $20 million, according to Mega Millions.
Lottery tickets are pictured as the Powerball lottery jackpot hits $1 billion in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, U.S. October 31, 2022. (REUTERS/Hannah Beier / Reuters Photos)
For Mega Millions, its biggest-ever jackpot was $1.537 billion in 2018.
Powerball’s next drawing is slated for Saturday evening, with the odds of matching five white balls plus the red one for the jackpot hovering around 1 in 292.2 million, the lottery said.
