Mega Millions Numbers Match No Tickets As Jackpot Rises To $25 Million

The Mega Millions jackpot ticked upward after Friday’s drawing, the second in a row with no big winner, and the 49th drawing overall in 2014, a year that has seen seven winning tickets for six jackpots won so far.

The Mega Millions jackpot for Tuesday’s drawing now rises to $25 million, for a winner who chooses to take the full amount of the payout in 30 annual installments checks.

There was a $20 million jackpot on the line Friday, but none of the 15,038,562 Mega Millions tickets purchased by aspiring multimillionaires for the drawing hit all six numbers, or even the first five numbers without matching the Mega Ball.

That means there were no second-prize “Match-5” million-dollar winners on Friday, either. In fact, the richest prize won in the June 20 Mega Millions lottery was just $5,000, an amount that may be claimed by 14 people around the country who matched four of those first five Mega Millions numbers — plus the Mega Ball.

There were three such “4+1” winners in California as well, but under that state’s unique pari-mutuel payout system — in which all of the money wagered on lottery tickets in the state is pooled and then divided among the winners — those three Mega Millions players will take home a little less money: $4,889, to be exact, before taxes.

If anyone had hit the “Match 5” in California, however, the payout would have been a good one, thanks to pari-mutuel wagering. That prize would have been $1,571,487 — of anyone had been lucky enough to win it.

As an example of how pari-mutuel payouts can vary widely, on Friday in California, a woman who hit the second-prize “Match 5” back on May 9 finally turned in her winning ticket. But Milandi Almaweri of San Leandro, in California’s Bay Area region, was able to claim just $468,905 from her Mega Millions ticket, less than one-third what a winner of the “Match 5” from June 20 could have claimed.

Nationwide, there was $1,868,844 won in Friday’s Mega Millions drawing, across 1,018,946 winning tickets, meaning 6.8 percent of all tickets sold were winners at some level on Friday.

Did your Mega Millions ticket fall into that 6.8 percent? To find out, check the number on your ticket against the following numbers, drawn Friday at 10:59 pm in Atlanta, Georgia:

1 — 22 — 25 — 29 — 56 Mega Ball 3

If your numbers don’t match, better luck next time! The cash value of the Tuesday Mega Millions jackpot, to a winner who chooses to take the full amount in one lump sum, will be $14 million.