DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) – The Mega Millions lottery jackpot rose to nearly $ 1 billion before Friday night’s draw after more than four months without a winner due to bad luck, poor odds and partially blamed pandemic coronavirus reduced gambling .
It’s only the third time a lottery jackpot has increased so much, but a lot has changed since the last time such a big prize was taken into play in 2018. The chances of winning a jackpot remain the same – incredibly small – but for a variety of reasons why fewer people play Mega Millions or Powerball, the two lottery games offered in most parts of the country.
And even though the huge Mega Millions prize and a $ 731.1 million Powerball jackpot won on Wednesday in a single ticket sold in Maryland cut sales for games, Maryland lottery director Gordon Medenica remarked, “I still don’t have out of the woods ”.
Medenica acknowledged that sales were dramatically lower before the pandemic and fell further in the spring and summer.
After a peak in October 2018, Medenica said that sales of major lottery games fell by about 50%, prompting discussions among lottery officials about jackpot fatigue. Sales of Mega Millions and Powerball continued to decline after the virus hit alongside other lottery games, but while zero tickets and other instant games came back strong later in the year, sales of national games remained dying.
In response to declining sales, officials have updated national games to reduce starting jackpots from $ 40 million to $ 20 million and changed the rules for the minimum guaranteed increase between draws. The moves made fiscal sense, but made the jackpots grow more slowly, further reducing sales, as evidenced by the record of 37 no-win draws to reach the current Mega Millions jackpot, which is still much lower than all-time highs.
“That’s why it takes so many throws to reach a high jackpot level,” said Medenica.
What hasn’t changed is the odds.
By design, Mega Millions and Powerball are relatively generous in awarding small dollar prizes, and lottery officials boast that there is a one in 24 chance of winning something. But in order to generate huge jackpots, officials have to be absolutely pathetic when it comes to paying jackpots.
It is difficult to understand how unlikely it is to win the odds one at 292.2 million for Powerball or one at 302.5 million for Mega Millions.
To figure out your chances, Steven Bleiler, a professor of mathematics and statistics at Portland State University, said people should imagine a 40-foot (12.2-meter) wide, 120-foot pool. feet (36.6 meters) long and 5 feet (1.5 meters) deep, filled to the brim with M & Ms, of which only one is green. To win, all a player has to do is jump with his eyes closed and walk until he finds that green candy.
Andrew Swift, a professor of mathematics at the University of Nebraska-Omaha, put it this way: Your chances of picking up two oysters and finding a pearl in both are about twice as high as winning a lottery jackpot.
However, someone always wins in the end and it happened again after the Powerball draw on Wednesday night, when a single ticket was sold at a store In the small community of Lonaconing, Maryland, he hit all six numbers. The winner can receive an annuity of $ 716.3 paid over 30 years or a cash prize of $ 546.8 million.
What follows is not clear. Some states rely on the growth of online games, but while the 10 states that allow purchases on computers and phone applications see sales increases, such purchases remain a relatively small percentage of total revenue.
“The current release has revived the game as it was designed,” said Medenica. “Whether we continue to consider the changes or not is to be seen.”
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