Just shy of a record breaking amount, the Jackpot in Tuesday night’s Mega Millions Lottery reached an estimated $636 million. When the Mega Millions winning numbers were unveiled, was anyone suddenly a half-billionaire?
As the numbers rolled out for December 17, 2013, they were revealed as 8, 14, 17, 20 and 39, with a Megaball of 7. The only lottery jackpot larger on record was a $656 million Mega Millions jackpot from March of last year which was split between 3 winning tickets.
So far there are early reports that a single winning ticket may have been sold in California for the Mega Millions, but other states have yet to comment. If that is not the case, the next Mega Millions drawing on Friday could get very close to a Billion dollar jackpot.
So why is the jackpot rising so quickly? It’s all because of a change to the lottery in October. At that time, the Mega Millions increased the drawing’s pool of numbers, raising the odds of hitting the jackpot from 1 in 176 million to 1 in 259 million.
The result is that more people do not win, and the jackpot continues to roll over making it larger each time. Before the change, players selected 5 numbers, from 1 to 56. That has now increased to 75. Additionally the range for the, gold ball was reduced from 46 to only 15.