No ticket matched all six numbers in a record US Powerball jackpot of almost $950m, meaning it will soar to $1.3bn (€1.19bn) for Wednesday’s draw.
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The winning tickets matched five out of six numbers in the latest game, missing only the Powerball number 13, state lottery officials said in a news release.
No ticket matching 5 numbers and the Powerball was purchased for Saturday’s drawing, which had a final jackpot of $948 million, the biggest jackpot ever offered in the United States.
The jackpot has been steadily climbing since it first started at $40 million in November. Cripe said 75 percent of all 292.2 million combinations were bought before Saturday’s drawing.
To win, a participant must match five numbers between 1 and 69 and a sixth number between 1 and 26 that is drawn separately.
One ticket bought in Hampton Roads is worth $1 million; two others are worth $50,000, according to the Virginia Lottery.
Powerball tickets are sold in 44 states, Washington, D.C., the U.S. Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico.
Excitement swirled among ticket buyers despite what some statisticians call mind-boggling odds for the Powerball game – one in 292 million. The overall chance of winning a prize is 1 in 24.87.
Of course, with odds close to one and 300 million, leaving a better chance of getting struck by lightning, it’s still fun to dream. At the peak of the buying frenzy, which occurred from 6 and 7 p.m. Saturday night, players were buying Powerball tickets at the rate of $7,107 per minute.
California, the nation’s most populous state, normally sees Powerball sales of $1 million a day, but on Saturday morning sales were a head-spinning $2.8 million an hour, said California Lottery spokesman Mike Bond.
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Own The ConversationAsk The Big Question: What would you do with the $1.3 billion, or whatever hundreds of millions it becomes after taxes in your state? The next Powerball drawing is Wednesday. Grand prize winners can take single payouts but, to get the full value of the prize, must take payments over 30 years. The electronic signs used at businesses who sell Powerball tickets are only created to display amounts in the millions of dollars, so the amount showing for this prize is $999 million.
