The winning numbers for Wednesday night’s Powerball drawing were 02, 11, 22, 35, 60 and Powerball 23. It was not immediately clear if there were any winning tickets.
The fourth-largest lottery jackpot in US history could reach the biggest ever if no one wins the top prize on Wednesday night Powerball drawing. Jackpot currently sitting at 1.2 billion dollars.
Since the last person hit the jackpot on August 3rd, there have been 38 consecutive draws without a jackpot winner.
Jackpot grows after each draw without a winner and is now approaching the record 1.586 billion US dollars In 2016, three Powerball players won the second– and third-the biggest prizes were won by Mega Millions lottery players.
“I think it would be close to a record, if not a record,” said Drew Svitko, executive director of the Pennsylvania Lottery. “The record $1.586 billion that we had in 2016 is within reach, but it really depends on a few factors.”
The first factor is the number of tickets sold, and they fly out of lottery machines all over the country.
131.6 million Powerball games were sold in Monday night’s drawing, said Anna Domoto, a spokeswoman for the Multistate Lottery Association, which oversees the game. This accounted for 36.3% of all possible combinations of numbers, as millions of players chose the same numbers.
That’s a lot, but given that the odds of winning the jackpot are 1 in 292.2 million, that means that about 186 million combinations of numbers were not covered, so no one won the top prize.
While the focus of the game is on the $1.2 billion prize, which is an annuity paid out over 29 annual payments, almost all winners choose the prize money, which would be $596.7 million.
However, the advertised prize is based on the annuity and is the second factor that determines the jackpot higher interest rates cause the annuity to increase more rapidly. In other words, $596.7 million in cash is going into investments that will eventually cost $1.2 billion, and those investments will grow faster as interest rates rise.
“We’re using the investment to fund the annuity to pay this prize, so the investment is interest-bearing, and the extent to which interest rates affect the value of that investment affects that jackpot,” Svitko said.
For some players, it’s not about the top prize.
“What’s so fun about that?” Jeff Bennett asked on Monday. “It’s the potential to win, not that you win. It’s the potential — you’re buying hope.”
But even with the huge jackpot, not everyone has caught Powerball fever.
“No use,” said a man named Diego. “I think you have a better chance of getting struck by lightning than winning that lottery.”
