Mega Millions estimated jackpot nears $1 billion, at $910 million, after no winners of roughly $820 million
The Mega Millions estimated jackpot jumped to $910 million after no winning tickets were sold for Tuesday night's pot of gold of some $820 million.
The winning numbers for Tuesday's estimated jackpot, the fifth-largest in the game's history, were 3, 5, 6, 44 and 61, and a Mega Ball of 25.
The next drawing will be Friday night, and the grand prize could well surpass the estimated $910 million mark as more and more tickets are gobbled up.
There hasn't been a Mega Millions jackpot winner in 28 drawings since April 18, and the jackpot had jumped by about $100 million since last Friday's drawing.
If a single winning ticket had been sold for Tuesday's drawing, the winner would have had the choice of taking an estimated lump sum payment of $418 million before taxes or going with the annuity option. That consists of an immediate payment followed by 29 annual payments that eventually equal the full jackpot minus taxes.
The cash option for Friday night's estimated $910 million jackpot would be $464.2 million.
There have been four Mega Millions jackpots north of $1 billion, with the largest being a $1.537 billion jackpot in October of 2018, claimed by a single winning ticket sold in South Carolina. In January, a winning ticket for a $1.348 billion jackpot was sold in Maine.
The odds of winning the Mega Millions jackpot are approximately one in 302.58 million.
Last week, a single winning ticket was sold in downtown Los Angeles for the $1.08 billion Powerball jackpot, the sixth-largest in U.S. lottery history. The winner has yet to come forward to claim their prize.
The Los Angeles area has seen a string of lottery luck of late. The winning ticket for February's $2.04 billion Powerball jackpot, the largest in lottery history, was sold at a gas station in Altadena, a city in Los Angeles County.
Mega Millions tickets, which are $2 each, are sold in all states except Alabama, Utah, Alaska, Hawaii and Nevada. They're also sold in Washington, D.C., and the U.S. Virgin Islands. According to the game, half the proceeds from each ticket sold remain in the state where the sale occurred, with that money going to support "designated good causes and retailer commissions."
According to the North American Association of State and Provincial Lotteries, a trade group that represents the interests of all the major lotteries, each state determines which programs its lottery profits go towards. In California, for example, all lottery proceeds go to public education, which in the 2021-22 fiscal year amounted to about $2 billion.