Powerball Numbers Miss Again, Jackpot At $70 Million, Ticket Sales Still Sluggish
The Powerball numbers drawn Saturday produced no jackpot winner, the third drawing in a row without anyone hitting the jackpot in the 50th overall drawing of 2014. But ticket sales remained low and behind last year’s pace.
After 50 Powerball drawings in 2013, the multi-state lottery had sold almost 1.4 billion tickets. But this year, Powerball sales have yet to hit the billion mark, at just over 944 million. In fact, at the current pace, the game could require another four to six drawings to crack the 1 billion threshold.
Saturday’s Powerball drawing offered a jackpot of $60 million, but sold only 13,505,151 tickets. That total was up slightly from the last time the jackpot stood at $60 million — May 3, when 13,471,275 tickets were sold — but stood well behind two $60 million summer drawings last year, which sold 18,281,058 on June 8, 2013, and 14,927,436 on July 3.
What accounts for the slowdown in Powerball sales? Conventional wisdom has always held that when the economy improves, lottery sales drop because fewer people then look to improve their economic lot through games of chance, such as Powerball, that promise immediate riches.
But a study conducted at Henderson State University in Arkansas found that the conventional wisdom does not hold true. The correlation between lottery sales and a bad economy is not strong enough to make a difference.
A more likely reason, though one that has yet to be studied, is “jackpot fatigue.” With lottery games such as Powerball and its nationwide counterpart, Mega Millions, frequently offering jackpots well into the nine-figure range, players — the “jackpot fatigue” theory holds — become apathetic about jackpots that appear less impressive, even though a sudden influx of $60 million would certainly change the life of any Powerball player in the blink of an eye.
With the Powerball numbers coming up empty Saturday, Wednesday’s jackpot now stands at $70 million — another amount that would surely transform the daily life of anyone lucky enough to hit all six Powerball numbers.
Though there was no jackpot winner on Saturday, four Powerball players matched the first five numbers, but not the Power Ball. Three of those second-prize winners — in Indiana, New York and Virginia — will take home a check for $1 million, before taxes.
The fourth “Match 5” winner, from Connecticut, paid $3 for a Powerball ticket, activating the Power Play option and winning $2 million in exchange for that extra dollar spent.
There was $7,896,802 in prize money won in Saturday’s drawing from 400,736 winning Powerball tickets.
Is any of that cash yours? Check your Powerball ticket to see if it matches these numbers, drawn at 10:59 pm in Tallahassee, Florida.
5 — 6 — 37 — 41 — 54 Powerball 26
The cash value of Wednesday’s jackpot, to a winner who claims the prize in a single payment, will be an estimated $40.9 million.
