The Powerball jackpot for Saturday night’s drawing has grown to a record $900 million.
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The Powerball jackpot has been growing since November 4, 2015, the last time the jackpot was hit. By making it harder to win a jackpot, the tougher odds made the ever-larger prizes inevitable.
Grief says Powerball sales on Thursday were double the previous record for that day and that it’s possible the estimated jackpot could rise again before the drawing.
A person purchase Powerball lottery tickets from a newsstand Wednesday, Jan. 6, 2016, in Philadelphia.
Party World in Alpine Township, Michigan, has sold more than $100 million in winning lottery tickets in the past five years, its manager said.
Excitement swirled among ticket buyers despite what some statisticians call mind-boggling odds for the Powerball game – one in 292 million. Simple. All you have to do is win the Powerball lottery Saturday night!
Winners of the top prize are paid in 30 annual installments or as a one-time, lump sum payment.
It reached a staggering $900 million on Saturday. The state’s largest Powerball group win was a $107.5 million cash jackpot shared by 48 transit workers in the Philadelphia area in April, 2012.
It’s not like players ever had a great shot at winning a jackpot, but by lengthening the odds, he said, “you take odds that were really, really small before, and now they’re almost twice as small as they were before”.
Sonja Peterson of Minneapolis said she never buys Powerball tickets, but on Saturday, she bought two with random numbers at Bobby & Steve’s Auto World gas station – one for her, one for her boyfriend.
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A survey of Cumberland Farms customers reveled that most lottery players are not superstitious about which numbers they play – though many are sentimental.
