With No Powerball Winner In Wednesday’s Drawing, Prize Creeps Up To $750 Million And Could Hit $1 Billion
With no Powerball winners in Wednesday’s drawing, it could soon be deja vu for lottery hopefuls.
Just days after the Mega Millions topped $1 billion in two consecutive drawings, the other multi-state lottery is approaching that mark after Wednesday’s $602.5 million prize went unawarded as no one matched the Powerball winning numbers. As the Courier-Journal reported, the prize will immediately jump to $750 million and could continue to grow as ticket sales increase in the days before Saturday’s big drawing.
The Powerball winning numbers for October 24 were 3, 21, 45, 53, 56 and Powerball 22. While no one won the jackpot, the Courier-Journal reported that there was at least one second-prize winner, a Kentucky player who took home $1 million for matching five numbers.
With the drawing coming up empty on Wednesday, the losing streak for Powerball now stretches yet another week. The last time anyone won the jackpot was August 11, when a man from Staten Island took home a prize worth $245.6 million.
The new Powerball drawing could approach $1 billion, and will likely reach that point if no one wins the drawing on Saturday. A surge of ticket sales is expected to boost the jackpot, as it did with the Mega Millions in recent drawing that approached and then passed the $1 billion mark in sales.
Regardless of where it ends up, Saturday’s $750 million Powerball drawing will be the fourth-largest lottery drawing of any kind in American history. The top Powerball prize of all time was awarded in early 2016, when the top prize reached $1.5 billion. The other two drawings on that list are the last two Mega Millions draws — $1 billion on Friday and $1.6 billion on Tuesday.
Saturday’s drawing could have the benefit of coming in the wake of that prize. Reports from across a number of states indicate that sales for lottery tickets reached all-time highs, so the tens of millions of Americans who didn’t win the Mega Millions jackpot could have a second chance of sorts on Saturday in the Powerball drawing.
Powerball jackpot leaps to $750 million after no one wins $620 million https://t.co/kS6pQHdrIM pic.twitter.com/XRGAqzLPJs
— CBS News (@CBSNews) October 25, 2018
The increasingly large jackpots are by design. Lottery officials tweaked the format nearly two years ago in order to encourage larger top prizes and increase sales. In doing so, the odds of winning the top prize also rose to 1 in 292.2 million. As CBS News pointed out, that is still slightly better than the Mega Millions which changed its rules to increase the odds to 1 in 302.5 million.
For those who want to take another crack at becoming ultra-wealthy, the next Powerball drawing will be held on Saturday, October 27, at 11 p.m. ET
