Powerball Numbers Yield No Jackpot Winner, Ticket Sales Down By A Million
The Powerball numbers drawn Wednesday night produced no jackpot winner, and no second-prize winners either, as interest in the nationwide lottery game appeared to lag with ticket sales dropping by more than a million from Saturday’s drawing.
The jackpot for Saturday’s Powerball game moves up a notch, from $70 million to $80 million for the nationwide lottery game played in 43 states, plus the District of Columbia and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
But since a $148.8 million Powerball jackpot was won by a Florida family on April 23, lottery players have had trouble getting excited about Powerball. While there have been two weekend drawings since then, each has just edged past the 13 million mark in sales for the $2 Powerball tickets.
The two mid-week drawings have each seen a drop, with just 12,344,242 Powerball tickets sold for Wednesday’s game — more than 1.1 million fewer than for Saturday’s, despite a jackpot of $70 million rather than $60 million. Last Wednesday’s drawing saw even lower numbers, selling only 11,555,819 tickets.
Wednesday’s ticket sales were the lowest for a Powerball drawing with a jackpot of at least $70 million since the game raised its ticket price from $1 to $2 on January 18, 2012. Since then, only one other Powerball jackpot of $70 million or more has failed to sell more than 13 million tickets. That came on October 17 of 2012 when a $70 million jackpot saw 12,751,142 tickets sold.
The flagging Powerball ticket sales could simply reflect a form of jackpot fatigue, as players become jaded about the huge amounts of money given away by the lottery and wait until the jackpot reaches well into the nine figures before buying en masse.
On the other hand, lottery sales in general tend to go down when the economy improves, so the staggering sales could be a sign that Americans are becoming more confident of their own ability to draw a sustainable income and therefore less willing to gamble on overnight riches.
All in all, there were $2,069,070 in prizes awarded, or potentially awarded, in Wednesdays Powerball drawing, including 10 third-prize winners who matched four of the first five numbers plus the Powerball. Four of those tickets activated the Power Play option and are good for a $20,000 prize. The other six are worth $10,000.
Did you win anything in the Wednesday Powerball game? Check your ticket against these numbers, drawn at 10:59 pm in Tallahassee, Florida.
17 — 29 — 31 — 48 — 49 Powerball 34
The cash value of Saturday’s Powerball jackpot, for a winner who chooses the single-payment option, will be $47.5 million.
