The Mega Millions jackpot continues to grow after there were no winners on Friday.
The jackpot rose to an estimated $800 million, with a cash payout option of $401.8 million for Tuesday’s drawing. It is the seventh-highest jackpot in the game’s history. The six higher jackpots were over $1 billion.
Mega Million said the jackpot was last won on June 4 in Illinois with a ticket worth $552 million. Since then, there have been 27 drawings but no jackpot winner.
So far this year, only two Mega Millions jackpots have been won. Before the Illinois winning ticket, a winning ticket worth $1.1 billion was purchased in New Jersey in March. This prize has not yet been claimed. Winners in New Jersey have one year to claim their prize.
Tickets are sold in 45 states, Washington, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Drawings are held on Tuesdays and Fridays at 11 p.m. in Atlanta, Georgia. Tickets cost $2 each. Half of the proceeds from the sale of each Mega Millions ticket stay in the state where the ticket was sold.
The odds of winning the jackpot are 1 in over 302 million. The overall odds of winning Mega Millions are 1 in 24.
The ticket with the largest Mega Millions jackpot – $1.6 billion – was sold in Florida in August last year.
Since 2018, Mega Millions has produced six jackpots of over $1 billion, with the largest prize being a staggering $1.602 billion. The winners lived in South Carolina, Michigan, Illinois, Maine, Florida and most recently New Jersey.
Huge prices are more oftenand that’s no accident, Victor Matheson, an economics professor at the College of the Holy Cross, told CBS News in 2023. The Multi-State Lottery Association, a nonprofit that coordinates the Mega Millions game, designed it to have bigger prizes, and turning the lottery into a statewide game means more people are paying into the jackpot. The ticket price has also been doubled and there are more number options, making it even harder to win.
Kerry Breen contributed to this report.
