All eyes are predictably on the jackpot, but there are other prizes available that have significantly easier odds than Powerball’s one in 292 million. It surpassed $656 million – the previous mark for the largest grand prize of for a US game – on Thursday, when it reached $675 million.
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The largest US lottery jackpot in history remains at stake following Saturday night’s Powerball drawing rollover.
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. About 95 percent of Powerball tickets have computer-generated numbers.
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The Multi-State Lottery Association, the organization that runs the Powerball, hoped that record-breaking jackpot amounts would be in the near future when they changed the winning odds from about one in 175 million to one in 292.2 million.
Camelot said it expected to have sold at least 400 tickets per second, online and by retailers, in the final hours before sales stopped at 7.30pm on Saturday.
The large jackpot has those who can’t play in their states driving across state lines – if they can. About 78 percent of all the possible combinations were purchased in Saturday’s drawing. The prize doubles to $2 million if the player purchased a Power Play ticket, which costs $2 instead of $1 but doubles non-jackpot prizes.
The top prize rolled over to $1.3 billion after no one won Saturday’s $947.9 million jackpot, and was raised again Monday due to strong ticket sales. Convenience stores had glowing signs and paper printouts letting patrons know about Wednesday’s projected $1.3-billion prize.
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A Pennsylvania Lottery spokesman said his state’s lottery “has developed high-standard protocols, which are modeled by lotteries across the United States and around the globe”. Those figures are before federal and state taxes, which will eat up roughly half of the cash-option prize.
