Mega Millions Starts At Square One But No One Wins $15 Million Jackpot

The Mega Millions lottery game started a new build-up Friday night toward what players hope will be another record-breaking jackpot, after the numbers drawn in Atlanta, Georgia, yielded no winner of the relatively modest $15 million grand prize.

On Tuesday, Mega Millions gave away the seventh-largest prize in U.S. lottery history, $414 million, split between two winners. Neither has come forward yet. One of those two winning tickets was purchased at a Sunoco A-Plus mini-mart in Merritt Island, Florida. The other, at Lady’s Liquors in La Plata, Maryland.

As expected, with the jackpot reset to its $15 million starting point, ticket sales were way down for Friday’s Mega Millions drawing. Just over 18 million were sold, compared to a frenzied 113,435,277 sales or the $414 million jackpot.

The reduced number of sales also meant that the lower-level prizes were down. Only one ticket won the “Match 5” second prize of $1 million, secured by, as the name implies, matching the first five Mega Millions numbers, but not the Mega Ball number.

That million-dollar ticket was sold in New Hampshire.

All in all, more than 1.2 million tickets won some sort of prize Friday, ranging down to just a single dollar for matching the Mega Ball and nothing else.

Were you one of the winners? Check your ticket against these numbers:

2 — 23 — 30 — 35 — 53 Mega Ball 10

There were 26 third-prize Mega Millions winners, who matched four of the first five numbers plus the Mega Ball — just one number away from winning the whole enchilada. But instead of $15 million, those winners pocket just $5,000, except in California.

The five third-prize Mega Millions winners in that state win just $3,569 each under California’s pari-mutuel payout system, according to the lottery watching folks at USA Mega.

The Mega Millions jackpot for Tuesday now creeps up to $20 million, but with odds of 258,890,000 to one, chances are always good that it will just keep creeping and creeping. Last week’s $414 million jackpot was the result of Mega Millions going from January 7 to March 14 with no jackpot winners.