Powerball Jackpot Jumps To $70 Million After Third Straight Drawing With No Winner


The Powerball jackpot will rise again, after the drawing held Wednesday, July 30, failed to find a ticket matching all six numbers for the top prize in the nationwide lottery game. However, one ticket in Texas was good for the $1 million second prize.

Saturday’s Powerball drawing now carries a top prize of $70 million as the jackpot once again nears the magical $100 million mark. The Powerball lottery generally requires about seven drawings with no jackpot winner to reach that nine-figure total, unless ticket sales suddenly spike.

But it looks like that’s not happening. Wednesday’s drawing attracted only 11,469,502 ticket sales, the fifth time this year that total ticket sales have come in under 12 million — and the second-lowest ticket sales figure of 2014.

The lowest-selling Powerball drawing of 2014 came just a week ago, when the July 23 drawing, offering a $40 million jackpot, sold just 10,913,114, which was the only time in 2014 that sales had not reached at least 11 million. It was earlier reported that the drawing had sold over 19 million tickets, but that figure was an error.

In fact, the July 23 drawing sold the fewest tickets since Powerball raised the price of a single ticket to $2 on January 18, 2012.

But sales for Wednesday’s Powerball drawing were the third-lowest since then. In all of 2013, no Powerball drawing saw ticket sales dip below 12 million. But this year, sales have missed that mark five times now.

Nonetheless, the Powerball jackpot keeps going up as long as no one wins, and the nationwide lottery game has now seen seven winners so far in 2014.

In addition to the one ticket in Texas that matched the first five numbers but not the separately drawn Power Ball number, good for a $1 million prize, the Wednesday Powerball drawing had 16 winners of the game’s third prize.

Those tickets matched the Power Ball number plus four of the first five numbers, winning a $10,000 payout, except for three on which the Power Play option was activated — by paying an extra dollar for the ticket —- making those tickets worth $30,000 each, because the Power Play multiplier number was “3.”

Overall, there were 355,181 winning tickets sold for the July 30 Powerball drawing, with a total of $3,512,684 prize money won. Was any of that money yours? Check your July 30 Powerball ticket against these numbers, drawn in Tallahassee, Florida, at 10:59 pm:

13304249 53 Power Ball 29

The Saturday Powerball jackpot, if taken as a single payment, will be worth an estimated $42.3 million.

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