Mega Millions Jackpot Up To $38 Million, But Ticket Sales Slightly Down
The Mega Millions jackpot continued its slow climb Tuesday, rising by $10 million to a $38 million top prize after the April 15 drawing produced no match with all five numbers and the Mega Ball number. But the public remained unexcited by the eight-figure jackpot offered Tuesday, with ticket sales falling slightly from the previous drawing.
While ticket sales usually climb along with jackpots, the 16,315,888 sold for the Tuesday Mega Millions drawing with its $28 million jackpot were almost 600,000 fewer than three days earlier when a $20 million jackpot drew 16,901,932 sales.
Despite four Mega Millions jackpot winners in the 30 drawings so far this year, including an improbable three winners since March 18, only 14 drawings have sold more than 20 million tickets, all of them coming in the run-up to what proved to be the seventh largest lottery prize in U.S. history, a $424 million jackpot.
But even them sales did not crack the 20 million mark until the Mega Millions jackpot hit $84 million on January 3. From there, sales climbed steadily until they topped out at 113,435,277 for the March 18 drawing, which resulted in two winners splitting the massive Mega Millions jackpot.
With the relatively low ticket sales, it’s not too surprising that only one ticket matched the first five Mega Millions numbers. That ticket would normally be good for a cool $1 million prize. But the ticket was sold in California where lower-tier prizes are doled out on a pari-mutuel basis.
Sometimes that can be good, resulting in even bigger prizes. But sometimes it can be bad. On Tuesday, it was definitely bad. The lucky Mega Millions player who hit the “Match 5,” at a liquor store in Palmdale, will collect just $320,061 — before taxes.
All in all, 1,138,484 tickets were redeemable for some amount of cash, mostly just a buck or two.
Still, it is always worth checking to see if yours was one of them. See if your ticket matches these numbers, drawn at 10:59 pm Tuesday night in Atlanta, Georgia.
4 — 39 — 46 — 47 — 70 Mega Ball 13
The $38 million Mega Millions jackpot up for grabs on Saturday will come to $21.4 million for a winner who chooses to take the whole Mega Millions prize in one cash payment, rather divided into than annual payments for the next 30 years.
