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DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) – The Mega Millions lottery game jackpot rose to nearly $ 1 billion ahead of Friday night’s draw after more than four months without a winner thanks to bad luck, bad odds and the reduction in gambling partially attributable to the coronavirus pandemic.
This is only the third time that a lottery jackpot has become so big, but a lot has changed since the last time such a big prize was up for grabs in 2018. The odds of winning a jackpot remain the same – insanely low – but for a variety of reasons why fewer people play Mega Millions or Powerball, the two lottery games offered in most countries.
And while the massive Mega Millions prize and a $ 731.1 million Powerball jackpot won on Wednesday from a single ticket sold in Maryland helped sell the games, Gordon Medenica, director of the Maryland Lottery, said : “We are not out of the woods yet.
Medenica acknowledged that sales were considerably lower before the pandemic, and they fell even more in the spring and summer.
After peaking in October 2018, Medenica said sales of major lottery games fell by around 50%, prompting lottery officials to discuss jackpot fatigue. Mega Millions and Powerball sales continued to decline after the virus hit with other lottery games, but as scratch tickets and other instant games rebounded strongly later in the year, sales of national games remained moribund.
In response to the drop in sales, officials updated National Games to reduce starting jackpots from $ 40 million to $ 20 million and changed the rules regarding guaranteed minimum increases between draws. These measures made fiscal sense, but resulted in slower jackpot growth which further reduced sales, as evidenced by the record 37 unsuccessful draws it took to hit the current Mega Millions jackpot which is still far below all-time highs..
“That’s why it takes so many reels to hit a high jackpot level,” Medenica said.
What hasn’t changed are the odds.
By design, Mega Millions and Powerball are relatively generous in awarding small dollar prizes and lottery makers boast that there is about a one in 24 chance of winning something. But to generate huge jackpots, officials have to be absolutely stingy about paying jackpots.
It’s hard to imagine how unlikely it is to beat the odds of one in 292.2 million for Powerball or one in 302.5 million for Mega Millions.
To get an idea of your odds, Steven Bleiler, professor of math and statistics at Portland State University, said people should imagine a pool 40 feet (12.2 meters) wide, 120 feet (36.6 meters) long and 5 feet (1.5 meters). deep, filled to the brim with M & Ms, only one of which is green. To win, all a player needs to do is jump blindfolded and wade through until they find that one green candy.
Andrew Swift, a math professor at the University of Nebraska-Omaha, put it this way: Your chances of picking up two oysters and finding a pearl in both are about twice as likely to win either. lottery jackpot.
Yet someone always wins in the end, and it happened again after Wednesday night’s Powerball draw when a single ticket sold at a convenience store in the small community of Lonaconing, Maryland, reached six numbers. The winner can take an annuity of $ 716.3 paid over 30 years or a cash prize of $ 546.8 million.
What comes next is not clear. Some states are banking on the growth of online games, but while the 10 states that allow purchases on computers and phone apps are seeing increased sales, those purchases remain a relatively small percentage of overall revenue.
“The current roll has revived the game as it was designed,” Medenica said. “We have to see if we continue to consider making changes.”
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Follow Scott McFetridge on Twitter: https://twitter.com/smcfetridge
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