DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) – The biggest prize in the Mega Millions lottery game has grown to nearly $ 1 billion before the draw on Friday night after more than four months without winning thanks to bad luck, the bad odds and reduced gambling partially guilty of the pandemic coronavirus.
It’s only the third time a lottery prize has become so big, but it’s changed a lot since the last time such a big prize was taken in 2018. The odds of winning a prize remain (incredibly small), but for to a variety of reasons why fewer people play Mega Millions or Powerball, the two lottery games offered in most of the country.
And while the huge Mega Millions prize and a $ 731.1 million Powerball prize won Wednesday for a single ticket sold in Maryland have reduced game sales, Maryland lottery director Gordon Medenica has noted : “We are not out of the woods yet”
Medenica acknowledged that sales were drastically lower before the pandemic, and increased further in the spring and summer.
After a spike in October 2018, Medenica said sales of the big lottery games fell by about 50%, prompting a discussion among lottery officials about the grand prize fatigue . Sales of Mega Millions and Powerball continued to decline after the virus hit along with other lottery games, but while zero tickets and other instant games rebounded strongly at the end of the year, domestic sales continued dying.
In response to falling sales, officials updated the national games to reduce initial prizes from $ 40 million to $ 20 million and changed the rules on guaranteed minimum increases between drawings. The moves made fiscal sense, but caused the prizes to win more slowly, further reducing sales, as evidenced by the record of 37 no-win draws that took to reach the current Mega Millions prize which is still well below the highs historical..
“That’s why it takes so many throws to reach a high level of grand prize,” Medenica said.
What hasn’t changed are the odds.
By design, Mega Millions and Powerball are relatively generous in awarding small dollar prizes and lottery officials boast that there is approximately one in 24 chances of winning something. But in order to generate big prizes, officials have to be absolutely miserable when paying the prizes.
It’s hard to understand how unlikely it is to beat the odds of one in 292.2 million for Powerball or one in 302.5 million for Mega Millions.
To get an idea of your chances, Steven Bleiler, a professor of mathematics and statistics at Portland State University, said people should imagine a pool 40 meters (12.2 meters) wide, 36, 6 feet long and 1.5 feet (5 feet) deep, full to the brim of M & Ms, only one of which is green. To win, all a player has to do is jump blindfolded and walk around until they find that one green candy.
Andrew Swift, a professor of mathematics at the University of Nebraska-Omaha, put it this way: Your chances of picking two oysters and finding a pearl in both are about twice as likely as you to win any lottery prize.
Still, someone always wins, and it happened again after the Wednesday night Powerball raffle when a single ticket was sold at a convenience store in the small community of Lonaconing, Maryland, it reached six numbers. The winner can get an annuity of $ 716.3 paid over 30 years or a cash prize of $ 546.8 million.
What comes next is not clear. Some states are betting on the growth of online gaming, but while the ten states that allow purchases in computers and phone apps see sales increase, those purchases remain a relatively small percentage of global revenue.
“The current release has revived the game as it has been designed,” Medenica said. “It remains to be seen whether we continue to think about making changes or not.”
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