The Mega Millions jackpot is soaring to new heights, reaching a record high of $1.55 billion after no player matched the winning numbers drawn Friday night.
No ticket matched all six numbers drawn Friday, including white balls 11, 30, 45, 52 and 56, plus gold Mega Ball 20, leading the jackpot to climb from $1.35 billion to an estimated $1.55 billion. The cash prize would amount to $757.2 million, Mega Millions said in a statement.
If won at the next drawing on Tuesday, Aug. 8., the top prize would surpass the current record jackpot of $1.537, which was won in South Carolina on Oct. 23, 2018. However, Mega Millions noted, although it is likely there will be a new record top prize, it is not a surety, as jackpots are difficult to predict with complete accuracy at this level.
“It’s exciting to watch Mega Millions grow,” said Gretchen Corbin, lead director of the Mega Millions Consortium and president and CEO of the Georgia Lottery. “As the jackpot climbs ever higher, we thank our players and retailers for their support, which benefits the many good causes funded by our participating lotteries.”
The current jackpot run has gone on since the last top prize was won in New York on April 18. In that time, there have been 31 drawings and more than 36.6 million winning tickets at all non-jackpot prize levels, ranging from $2 to $5 million.
The awards scored during this jackpot run include 62 second-tier prizes of $1 million or more won in 27 states across the country, including Arizona, California, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, Nebraska, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas and Wisconsin.
In the August 4 drawing alone, there were more than 5.3 million winning tickets at all prize levels, according to Mega Millions. Nine tickets matched the five white balls to win the game’s second-tier prize. Two, one sold in Michigan and another in Tennessee, are worth $2 million each because they included the optional Megaplier, which is available in most states for an extra purchase of $1 and was set at a multiplier of two for this drawing.
Another ticket that matched five of the winning numbers was sold in Tennessee, earning the player who bought it the standard $1 million second-tier prize. Six other tickets also scored $1 million in Louisiana, Missouri, Nebraska, New York, Oklahoma and Texas.
Although nobody has won the top prize since April, the year did not start off this slow for the lottery game. At the beginning of 2023, within four months, there were six jackpot winners, “a number far more typical of a full year and indicative of the truly random nature of lottery drawings,” Mega Millions noted.
All six of the jackpots won at the beginning of the year were scored from tickets bought in the Northeast, and three, more specifically, were won in New England. The top prizes won included $1.348 billion in Maine on Jan. 13, $20 million in New York on Jan. 17, $33 million in Massachusetts on Jan. 24, $31 million in Massachusetts again on Jan. 31, $483 million in New York on April 14 and $20 million in New York for a third time on April 18. The back-to-back wins in New York in April marked the first time in Mega Millions history that two top prizes were won in the same state in consecutive drawings.
Mega Millions is the only lottery game that has awarded four jackpots exceeding $1 billion. Tickets for the lottery game are sold for $2 each in 45 states, Washington, D.C. and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Drawings are held at 11 p.m. Eastern Time on Tuesdays and Fridays in Atlanta, Georgia.
“Half of the proceeds from the sale of each Mega Millions ticket remains in the state where the ticket was sold, where the money supports designated good causes and retailer commissions,” Mega Millions noted.
