Maybe that’s because the odds of winning are one in 302.6 million.Įven the upper middle class has been feeling financially anxious. The current Mega Millions jackpot, last drawn on Tuesday, has seen 23 drawings without a grand prize winner. Powerball also introduced a third weekly drawing last year, making the jackpot heftier as more people participated and lost. As the AP explains it, both Mega Millions and Powerball officials implemented rule changes in the mid-2010s that made jackpots difficult to win, thereby increasing the jackpot amount over time and enticing more people to buy lotto tickets in hopes of defying the odds. history are quite recent, dating back only to 2016. And last summer, over $1 billion was on the line in the nation’s third largest Mega Millions jackpot.Īll the largest jackpots in U.S. The sum surged after 40 consecutive drawings without a winner. November’s Powerball prize was the largest jackpot in history: a record-breaking $2.04 billion. It’s not just Mega Millions putting more on the line these days, lotteries are more mega than usual. The enormous winnings-the sixth-largest jackpot in history-are part of the “golden age of jackpots,” as the Associated Press calls it. It’s hard to conceptualize a number that high, and that’s partly the point.
