There have been about six jackpots that have exceeded $1 billion during the past five years, but the bigger jackpots aren't just due to chance — higher ticket prices and lower odds of winning make the jackpot grow faster from week to week.
The bigger jackpots aren't just due to chance, Matheson said. The Multi-State Lottery Association , a not-for-profit that coordinates the Mega Millions, has purposefully engineered the game to generate large sums, he added.
In the past decade, MUSL transformed Mega Millions into a national game, made it more difficult to win the jackpot and increased the price of each ticket from $1 to $2. As the Washington Post reported in 2018, the new rules gave Mega Millions participants, making it less likely they would guess the combination required to win the jackpot.
Higher ticket prices and lower odds of winning make the jackpot grow faster from week to week, Matheson said. The eye-popping figures also induce more people to buy tickets, adding to the lottery pool. Americans are 15 times more likely to buy a ticket when the winnings inch toward $1 billion compared to when the prize winnings are just $20 million, he said. Of course, the odds of winning are extremely rare. The chances as of Friday were 1 in 300 million, Matheson said.
"To put it into perspective, the typical person who is a golfer would have about a 1-in-15,000 chance in making a hole-in-one on a particular hole," Matheson said."So winning the Powerball or the Mega Millions is like getting two hole-in-ones in a row when playing golf."
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