The Powerball jackpot prize has been over a billion dollars all week but so far, refuses to fall. Drawings are held 3x per week and the odds against winning were increased a couple of years ago to help grow super jackpots so Saturday’s drawing will be knocking on record territory or tying some records and potentially breaking others.
The drawing Saturday will mark the 40th time in a row that numbers have been generated to give away this particular jackpot. Each week it remains unwon, the value rolls over into the next drawing, and part of the ticket sales are added to the value. The jackpot has only rolled over this many times once before – that run ended on Oct. 4, 2021, with a nearly $700 million dollar payday for a player in California.
The last time the Powerball awarded a jackpot prize was August 3.
Saturday’s jackpot is expected to be about $1.5 billion with a $745.9 million all-cash option. Tickets at a local retailer will cost $2 with an optional $1 upgrade to multiply non-jackpot winnings. Tickets are sold in 45 states, Washington D.C., Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
Powerball Tickets Online
However, players anywhere can pay a little extra to have a trusted lottery messenger service buy a ticket for them. Another way to access the odds and returns is through a lottery betting service completely unrelated to the provenance of tickets. That method relies on a bookmaker and insurance model and you are simply betting against the odds.
Lottery messenger services don’t usually charge any sort of commission or ask for any of your prize money – your obligation to them is completed when you pay the extra price for a ticket online.
If Saturday’s jackpot falls it will go down in the record books, at least for now, as the second-biggest jackpot in Powerball drawings history and third-biggest in U.S. lottery history. The world record for a Powerball jackpot is $1.586 billion and the second largest ever awarded in the US was $1.537 billion for Mega Millions.
The world record for any jackpot was set by Powerball in 2016 but there were 3 winning tickets sold and the prize was shared. That makes the single winner of the Mega Millions jackpot just a bit luckier in the end.
Watch the Drawing
Powerball drawings are broadcast live on television in lottery markets every Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday at 10:59 p.m. ET from the Lottery draw studios in Florida. They are live-streamed online at Powerball.com as well.
Even though there was no jackpot winner in Wednesday’s drawing, about $75 million in lower-tier prizes was awarded spread over 7.2 million tickets. Sixteen players won $1m and three added $1 to the costs of their tickets to buy the optional multiplier and won $2m.
Across the country, 189 tickets won $50,000 prizes, and 49 tickets won a $100,000 prize. The overall odds of winning a prize are 1 in 24.9, and the odds of winning the jackpot are 1 in 292.2 million.
Source: Powerball Jackpot Approaching World Record Amount, Powerball.com, November 3, 2022