Looking for a late Christmas gift? Friday’s Mega Millions jackpot proposes a $1.15 billion ticket
By Dawn Sawyer, CNN
(CNN) — What better way to start the new year than with a 10-figure winning lottery ticket?
Friday’s Mega Millions jackpot is $1.15 billion, or $516.1 million in cash. The prize surged since its last drawing on Christmas Eve, when no winner took home the estimated $1 billion jackpot.
If won Friday, the prize would be the fifth largest jackpot in the game’s history.
“We know that many people will likely receive tickets to Friday’s drawing as holiday gifts, and what a gift that would turn out to be if you ended up with a ticket worth a $1.15 billion jackpot,” said Joshua Johnston, lead director for the Mega Millions Consortium in a press release.
While Friday poses an opportunity for another 2024 Mega Millions winner, no one has won the jackpot in over 100 days.
According to the company, this year has had one of the fewest jackpot wins in any single year since the game started in 2002. Only three people have won this year.
In 2023, ten jackpots were awarded. There have been 217 jackpots won by 244 individual tickets since the game began.
The chances of winning any prize in the lottery game are 1 in 24, according to the Mega Millions website, but the odds of winning a jackpot are 1 in 302,575,350.
The largest amount ever won was last year, with a single Florida ticket claiming the prize of $1.602 billion.
Concerns have been raised by researchers that the chances of winning the Mega Millions are not only minuscule, but that state lotteries also siphon funds from impoverished communities under the guise of a chance to acquire wealth.
A study by the Howard Center for Investigative Journalism found that in 2022, stores selling lottery tickets were disproportionately located in the impoverished communities of every state, with proceeds going to far away colleges and wealthy school districts, rather than their community.
According to the company’s press release, half of the proceeds from each lottery ticket remain in the state where the ticket was sold to support “good causes and retailer commissions.”
In 2022, the Howard Center study found that ticket sales had grown from $47 billion to $82 billion, generating more revenue than corporate income taxes in ten states.
Tickets are priced at $2, with players in most jurisdictions given the option to pay an additional dollar to multiply their non-jackpot prizes. The company announced in October that the price will be more than doubled in April 2025, as they promise bigger prizes in return. Each ticket will be $5.
Winning numbers for the jackpot are announced every Tuesday and Friday at 11:00 p.m. ET on the Mega Millions website. Friday’s winning numbers will be posted on the website shortly after the evening drawing.
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