Just stop somewhere — a coffee shop, the grocery store checkout, or your office — and listen.
Odds are, someone within earshot is hatching a plan to buy mansions and yachts as long as a city block. But of course, many are sure to explain, they will divert serious cash to charity after winning what lottery officials call the biggest lottery jackpot in history.
Tuesday’s Mega Millions drawing will pay out at least $1.6 billion to winning jackpot ticket holders, if there are any, after Friday’s already record-setting drawing ended with no ticket matching all six numbers. That number is “uncharted territory” for Mega Millions, lottery officials said.
And the chances are rising that a winner or winners will emerge after the numbers are called.
By then, lottery officials estimate 75 percent of all number combinations will be purchased, Maryland Lottery and Gaming spokeswoman Carole Gentry told The Washington Post. There are 302,575,350 possible combinations — which are the odds of winning.
That fever has struck nationwide. The Virginia Lottery projects sales after Friday’s drawing through Tuesday’s drawing will approach $19 million, lottery spokeswoman Jennifer Mullen said. In the sales peak, as many as 12,700 tickets will be sold per minute, Mullen said.
On Thursday, ahead of the last drawing, in California players were buying 200 tickets a second, the Associated Press reported.
What’s my payout if I win?
The estimated cash option is about $905 million should a winner choose to take a one-time lump sum payment instead of annual payouts over 30 years, according to Mega Millions officials.
But that’s before taxes. You’d get about half of that after state and federal taxes take a big bite of your winnings, the AP reported. The annual payouts would net a higher payout over time, but you would have to squirrel away enough money to buy, say, a struggling NFL team.
[You’ve won the Mega Millions jackpot! Time to hide.]
Is it me, or are lottery jackpots huge these days?
It’s not just you. Lottery officials count on enormous jackpots to draw in players who would ordinarily avoid participating, so last October they made two big changes. They doubled ticket prices to $2 — and tweaked the formula to make it easier to win smaller prizes but harder to win the jackpot.
Here’s how Mega Millions used to work: Players picked five numbers from 1 to 75 and a Mega number from 1 to 15. The odds of winning the top prize were 1 in 258,890,850.
Since Mega Millions modified the formula, players now pick five numbers from 1 to 70 and a Mega number of 1 to 25. The odds of winning the jackpot are now 1 in 302,575,350.
In other words, reducing the number of balls for the first five numbers increases the chances of winning a smaller prize. But raising the number of Mega Balls makes it harder to win the jackpot. (You still win the big jackpot by matching all six winning numbers in a drawing.)
Powerball made similar changes to its rules in 2015. That game itself is currently at a monster jackpot, though a small one relative to Mega Millions, at $620 million ahead of Wednesday’s drawing.
Do people think they’re going to win?
They do.
“I believe I already won,” Joseph Rauch told Reuters, “believe I believe in the law of attraction. So what’s meant to be is already gonna be.”
Others are already self-read experts on how to deal with such an enormous and public prize. “I would incorporate myself as a business and become my own company,” Gregory Baron said in New York City.
And even apparent fatalists are wandering to the corner store for a shot at the jackpot.
Hank Kattan is 75 years old. He does not expect to win at all. And yet.
“I’ll never win, but you gotta give it a shot,” he told Reuters. “I’d like to change my way of life.”
Amy B Wang and J. Freedom du Lac contributed to this report.
Read more:
He returned the orange juice to save money — and picked up a winning $315 million lottery ticket
Winner of a $560 million Powerball jackpot can keep the money and her secret, judge rules
Perspective | How ’80s excess fueled today’s Mega Millions mania
She bought her first lottery ticket on her 18th birthday — and now she’s set for life
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