The jackpot for the US Powerball lottery rose to a whopping $1.3 billion (1.19 billion euros) on Sunday after organizers said there was no victor in the weekend draw.
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To win, all six numbers on the lottery ticket must be correct, with the first five in any order.
The lotto frenzy that has swept through the United States is set to continue, with a world record jackpot of US$1.3 billion ($1.87 billion) to be drawn on Wednesday.
Powerball starts its jackpot at $40 million and lets it grow if there are no winners.
November was the last time a jackpot victor emerged from Powerball, which is run by the Multi-State Lottery Association (MUSL). The new jackpot is the largest of any lottery game in US history.
The U.S. saw sales of $277 million on Friday alone and more than $400 million were expected Saturday, according to Gary Grief, the executive director of the Texas Lottery.
Powerball is played in 44 states as well as the District of Columbia, U.S. Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico.
It hit $700 million on Thursday after nobody won on Wednesday night – the 18th drawing without a victor. With nearly unimaginable riches at stake, many Americans who normally shun lotteries joined the long lines of people buying tickets at retail stores across the country.
The bad news? Your chances of claiming that top prize is one in 292.2 million.
The slim odds – around one in 292 million – have hardly been a deterrent.
The grand prize in Saturday’s drawing was worth $US558 million for a victor choosing an immediate cash payout instead of annual payments over 29 years, according to lottery officials. This week ticket purchases surged along with the size of the pot, driving the prize beyond the $900 million reported earlier.
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That guarantees you a strong payout over three decades, without the same risk of overspending, Olivia S. Mitchell, a professor of Insurance and risk management at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, told NBC.
