“We are in the financial stratosphere here”, Holyfield said.
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This is a new world record for any lottery jackpot game that can be won with a single ticket.
The jackpot for the twice-weekly game started at $40 million on November 4 and has been growing ever since.
While the US$1.3 billion is by far the largest up for grabs in North America, Spain’s latest elGordo lottery, or “The Fat One”, had a prize pool of US$2.4 billion.
Officials expect similar sales before the next drawing, but Grief said it’s hard to predict how excitement about the record jackpot will boost sales.
Lottery officials say 75 percent of the 292.2 million number combinations were purchased ahead of Saturday’s drawing.
The next draw is Wednesday, and the odds to win are close to one in 300 million, according to the Multi-State Lottery Association.
“We’ve sold more Powerball in a day than we’ve ever sold before, we’ve sold more in a week than we’ve ever sold”. The winners have not yet been announced but a CT Lottery spokeswoman told Patch the $2 million ticket was sold in Hartford County and the $1 million ticket was sold in Fairfield County. For the Powerball, players now choose one out of 26 numbers rather than one out of 35 numbers.
According to MLive.com, you should let your computer pick the numbers.
Initially the estimated jackpot was $1.3 billion with a $806 million cash option.
$604.5: The amount the Powerball victor will receive after deducting 25 percent federal tax, but before any state taxes.
Plus, most states would take a chunk – something winners in Alaska, Florida, Nevada, South Dakota, Texas, Washington and Wyoming wouldn’t have to worry about. Canada doesn’t tax lottery jackpots (except as income – so brace for it). There was also a huge Powerball jackpot in 2015.
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Powerball works like this: Players have to select 6 total numbers in the hopes that all 6 match the randomly drawn numbers. But that jackpot eventually went to three different ticketholders. “It appears that people are voting with their pocketbooks on this one”. Officials say it’s increasingly likely that someone will win the $900 million Powerball jackpot. So they waited until the rollover jackpot had built up to, hadn’t been won, so it built up over several weeks to $27 million.
