Watch Powerball Drawing Live Online: $119 Million Jackpot At Stake — Will You Win?


Lottery players can watch the Powerball drawing live online Wednesday night to find out immediately if the life-changing $119 million jackpot is theirs. The Powerball lottery has not experienced a jackpot winner in the last seven drawings, since three lucky players split a $564 million payout — the fifth-largest United States lottery jackpot of all time.

A link to live online streaming video of tonight’s Powerball drawing can be found below.

After Saturday’s Powerball game couldn’t find a winner for a $100 million jackpot, the top prize swelled by almost $20 million on the strength of solid if not spectacular ticket sales of more than 17.7 million. Based on previous ticket sales patterns, if there is no winner from Wednesday’s drawing, the jackpot would be expected to jump into the $130 million range for the Saturday game.

The odds that there will be a winner are less than one in 175 million. So whenever the Powerball numbers come up empty, it’s no surprise. When the jackpot hit $564 million on February 11, there had been 19 straight drawings with no winner. But in that case, with ticket sales skyrocketing, the jackpot jumped from $394 million to the $564 million final total in one drawing.

That’s because ticket sales more than doubled from one drawing to the next, from about 73.1 million on February 7 to more than 189.5 million for the winning February 11 Powerball game. The February 11 Powerball jackpot was the highest lottery jackpot of any kind since an astonishing Mega Millions jackpot of $648 million on December 17, 2013.

That one was the second-highest lottery jackpot in United States history.

The jackpot tonight is obviously not in league with those astronomical jackpots, but if someone actually wins the $119 million Powerball jackpot on March 11, how much money can the winner actually expect to receive?

The first factor to consider is that most Powerball and Mega Millions winners choose to take their winnings in a single cash payment. Because lottery jackpots are financed by bonds that take 30 years to mature, the “cash value” of a jackpot in considerably lower than the advertised value.

Tonight’s Powerball cash value is estimated at $76.4 million.

The federal government immediately takes a cut off the top. On the cash value amount, Uncle Sam’s slice will be $19.1 million — leaving the winner with $57.3 million.

But that’s not all, while many states do not tax lottery winnings, most do. If the winner bought the lucky ticket in New York, for example, the state will take another $6,738,480, leaving the winner with just over $50.5 million.

To find out if you are that winner, click on this link at 10:59 pm United States Eastern Time Wednesday night to watch the Powerball drawing live online.

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