Powerball Nearing $100 Million Mark After 5th Straight Drawing With No Winner


The Powerball jackpot jumped to $90 million after a fifth consecutive drawing with no big winner Wednesday night, raising the possibility that the 43-state lottery could soon see its fifth run of nine-figure jackpots of 2014.

Powerball has seen eight jackpot winners so far in 2014, with almost 1.2 billion tickets sold through 69 drawings this year. The highest Powerball jackpot of the year was a $425.3 million payout won by one Powerball player in Milpitas, California, on February 19. That jackpot was, and remains, the 6th-largest in U.S. lottery history.

But the Powerball lottery went 15 drawings with no jackpot winner starting on December 28 of last year, before reaching that historic total. Powerball did not crack the $100 million barrier again until April 6, which marked the seventh drawing in that sequence without a winner. After one more winnerless drawing, Powerball found another jackpot winner, this time with a $148.8 million prize.

There were 12,194,186 tickets sold for Wednesday’s drawing, which was the lowest number of tickets sold for a jackpot of at least $80 million so far in 2014. Though there was no big winner to be found among those tickets, an amazing nine tickets matched the first five numbers, but not the Power Ball, winning the game’s second-prize payout.

Two of those tickets were purchased with the Power Play option activated, which costs an extra dollar. But the extra buck was money well spent for those two Powerball players — one each in Florida and Iowa — because they will each pocket $2 million before taxes.

The other seven second-prize winners will take home a cool pre-tax $1 million. Two more of those tickets were purchased in Florida, with one each purchased in Georgia, Maryland, Wisconsin, New York and Massachusetts.

On top of that, 26 Powerball players won the game’s $10,000 third-prize, achieved by matching four if the first five numbers plus the Power Ball. But three of those tickets were purchased with Power Play, making them worth $30,000 each.

Two more third-prize tickets were purchased in California, where the state’s pari-mutuel payout system results in non-jackpot prizes varying from drawing to drawing. On Wednesday, third-prize in California was worth $9,280.

In total, there were 382,490 winning Powerball tickets Wednesday, food for $13,811,668 in prize money. To find out if any of that money is yours, check your August 27 ticket against the following numbers, drawn at 10:59 pm in Tallahassee, Florida:

1724264546 Power Ball 19

Saturday’s Powerball jackpot carries a single-payment cash value of $54.9 million.

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