Buying Powerball Tickets Online: What To Know Before Looking Online For Tickets To Wednesday’s $1.4 Billion Jackpot
Those who want to buy Powerball tickets online will find a host of companies offering to help them out, but in the sea of websites there is a lot of uncertainty about the whole process.
Is it legal? Is it legitimate? These are all questions that arise for people looking to buy Powerball tickets online, and the answers are not always so simple.
The question is more prevalent than ever given the record jackpot offered this week. After Saturday’s Powerball drawing failed to find a winner, the total jumped to more than $1.4 billion. The next drawing will be on Wednesday at 10:59 p.m. ET, which will likely end up being the most followed lottery drawing of all time.
That has sent a huge rush of people looking to buy Powerball tickets, and it showed last week. Lottery officials said about $400 million worth of tickets were sold on Saturday, the day of the drawing, and another $250-plus million on Friday. For people who live in the six states where Powerball tickets are not sold — or those overseas — buying tickets online appears to be the only chance they have at becoming a billionaire.
But, it might not be legal. As the official Powerball website explains, there are some state lotteries that offer to sell tickets to their own residents, but those sites offering to buy tickets and hold them for customers are not legal.
The official website offered a detailed explaination.
“A State has the right to gamble or create a lottery ONLY within its borders. When a game or information about a game cross a state line, or the national border, then it falls into federal jurisdiction. So, some lotteries do sell TO THEIR RESIDENTS through the Internet but not across their state line. Powerball tickets can only legally be purchased at a state lottery sales terminal in the lottery jurisdictions that sells the Powerball game. A lottery can also legally sell tickets on the Internet, but only to persons within its own state. No one can sell lottery tickets by mail or over the Internet across state lines or the U.S. national border. No one except the lottery or their licensed retailers can sell a lottery ticket. No one. Not even us. No one. No, not even that web site. Or that one. You really don’t need to send me questions about a specific site. None of them can legally sell lottery tickets across a state border or the U.S. border. No.”
The site also had a stark warning for people looking to buy Powerball tickets online. It said that if you are not buying from a licensed retailer in the state, or from the official state lottery site, “then you should not expect to be able to collect your prize.”
Powerball jackpot hits $1.4 billion—and the internet is #thirsty https://t.co/FwQoIXJcGm pic.twitter.com/pFUu9cFtgN
— People magazine (@people) January 12, 2016
People can still buy Powerball tickets online if they want, with many companies offering to physically buy the ticket and credit it to the customer’s account. But, there are no guarantees about the legality of these sites or the payouts.
It’s actually pretty surprising that the lottery would make it to this point. After last week’s ticket-buying bonanza, the odds were in favor of finding a winner. There are somewhere in the neighborhood of 500 million different combinations for the winning numbers, and the Multi-State Lottery Association that runs the Powerball game said close to 75 percent of the possible combinations were played on Saturday.
That extended the losing streak to yet another week. November 4 was the last time anyone won the Powerball jackpot, which started at $40 million. As Al.com noted, that was the intention of lottery officials when they tweaked the rules last year for bigger jackpots, increasing the odds from one in 175 million to one in 292.2 million.
The odds of winning #Powerball‘s jackpot are 1 in 292 million. https://t.co/2j9uOEx7ND pic.twitter.com/Zu18leuMQK
— ABC News (@ABC) January 12, 2016
The odds are long, and for those looking to buy Powerball tickets online, the odds may be even higher. As the Powerball site notes, buyer beware.
[Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images]
