New York – U.S. Mega Millions Lottery Hits Record $1.6 Billion After No Winners On Friday

New York – The U.S. Mega Millions jackpot grew to $1.6 billion, a world record for a lottery, after Friday’s drawing produced no winner of the grand prize, officials said.

The next Mega Millions draw will be on Tuesday, after no one hit all of the numbers of 15, 23, 53, 65, 70 and the Mega Ball 7 during Friday night’s draw.

“Mega Millions has already entered historic territory, but it’s truly astounding to think that now the jackpot has reached an all-time world record,” Gordon Medenica, lead director of the Mega Millions Group, said in a statement.

The record jackpot level for the multi-state U.S. lottery follows a move by the game’s organizers a year ago to lower the odds of winning, to one-in-303 million from one-in-259 million, in an effort to generate larger prizes.

The current jackpot beats the previous record, a $1.586 billion jackpot for a Powerball drawing in 2016, said Seth Elkin, a spokesman for Mega Millions.

A Spanish lottery called El Gordo typically generates a larger purse than Mega Millions or Powerball, but that money is split between many different winners and no single prize in El Gordo approaches the size of the latest Mega Millions jackpot, Elkin said.

The 24 semi-weekly Mega Millions drawings have failed to produce a top winner since July 24, when an 11-member office pool in Santa Clara County, California, shared a $543 million jackpot.

That is partly by design.

When lottery officials changed the rules for Mega Millions in October 2017 to shrink the odds of winning and increase ticket prices to $2 from $1, then-Mega Millions president Debbie Alford said the innovations would deliver “attention-grabbing jackpots” and generate increased revenues.

Leaders of the U.S. lottery industry, which generates about $80 billion in annual revenue, have experimented with different rules and marketing strategies as they have encountered falling interest among millennials, who are used to the almost-instant gratification of online games and social media. https://reut.rs/2AkTiya

Rule changes have also been made over the years to decrease the odds of winning the jackpot in Powerball, another popular multi-state lottery.

Powerball has a separate draw scheduled on Saturday. Its jackpot rose on Friday to $470 million from $430 million, with a lump sum value of $268.6 million.

Mega Millions tickets are sold in 44 U.S. states, the District of Columbia and the Virgin Islands. Several states allow online ticket purchases, but they prohibit out-of-state and foreign purchases, Elkin said.

If more than one winner is picked, the jackpot would be divided proportionately, as happened when the previous Mega Millions record of $656 million was drawn in March 2012 and was shared by winners in Kansas, Illinois and Maryland, a lottery official said.

Based on sales projections, 75 percent of the 302 million possible combinations will be chosen for Tuesday’s drawing, up from 59.1 percent in Friday’s, said Carole Gentry, spokeswoman for Maryland Lottery and Gaming.

“It’s possible that nobody wins again but it’s hard to fathom,” Gentry said.

About 280 million tickets sold in Friday’s drawing, none matching the winning mix of 7, 15, 23, 53, 65 and 70 to claim an estimated prize of $1 billion. Fifteen tickets matched five numbers for second-tier prizes of at least $1 million.

The $1.6 billion estimated jackpot would be the largest prize in U.S. history . The second-largest jackpot was a $1.586 billion Powerball drawing on Jan. 13, 2016.

Russ Lopez, spokesman for the California Lottery, said tickets were going “very, very quickly” on Saturday.

Tonya Jimenez, assistant manager at Beavers Market in Fort Collins, Colorado, said all three registers were going Saturday, a day after the store sold 220 tickets. Many hopefuls haven’t played before.

“We tell them how to play it,” she said. “They don’t know what to do. We’re doing a lot of explaining.”

The Mega Millions jackpot has been growing since July, when a group of 11 California office workers won $543 million.

It costs $2 to play the game. The odds of winning the jackpot are about one in 302 million but, with so many tickets being purchased, the likelihood of rollover becomes increasingly slim.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if it gets hit,” Gentry said. “I’d be more surprised if it doesn’t get hit.”

Mega Millions is played in 44 states Washington, D.C., and the U.S. Virgin Islands.