INQUISITR.COM / News & Politics

Mega Millions Winning Numbers For July 5: See The Winning Combination For Tuesday’s $454 Million Jackpot

By Nathan Francis
Published on: 15:00 PST, Jul 5, 2016

The winning Mega Millions numbers are in, and there’s a chance that one lucky person could be $454 million richer tonight.

Tuesday’s jackpot climbed to the seventh-highest in the nation’s history, with close to four months passing without a winner — a record dry spell for the Mega Millions lottery compared to Powerball, which has slightly more difficult odds and thus bigger prizes.

[The Mega Millions winning numbers can be found at the bottom of the page.]

In fact, the long streak of 34 drawings without a jackpot winner has crushed the previous record of 22 times without a jackpot being awarded. The last winner came in March, when a Washington man matched all the Mega Millions winning numbers for a cool $157 million jackpot.

“This is our longest roll ever, by far,” Paula Otto, executive director of the Virginia Lottery and lead director for Mega Millions, told Fox News.

Otto added that the nearly half-billion dollar prize has started to draw mega attention, though it hasn’t yet reached the fervor of the $1.6 billion Powerball jackpot from January.

“It takes much bigger jackpots to get players excited,” she told Fox News. “It looks like the tipping point might be right about now.”

It will be difficult to match January’s Powerball hysteria. The ever-growing jackpot became the top story across national news, with millions of people tuning in on television and online to follow each drawing as it crept into the billion-dollar range for the first time in United States lottery history.

The record prize also led to record sales, with some people buying hundreds or even thousands of dollars worth of tickets.

And the attention was just as high for the winners when the Powerball prize was finally won, as the nation turned its focus on just who the lucky winners would be.

Though the Mega Millions winning numbers on Tuesday could end the lottery’s longest dry spell, it has not yet reached the largest jackpot ever for that lottery. The biggest Mega Millions prize was in March 2012, a $656 million jackpot. The second-largest prize came more than year later, a $648 million prize in December 2013.

Tuesday’s Mega Millions jackpot has already reached the third-highest of all time, and if the July 5 winning numbers don’t find a winner, then it will likely creep toward that territory again.

The Mega Millions game is made available to residents in 44 states along with Washington, D.C. and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

The last chance at a Mega Millions jackpot came on Friday, when no one matched the winning numbers for what was then a $415 million jackpot. The amount of Tuesday’s jackpot crept steadily upward throughout the week as sales for the Mega Millions lottery became more and more brisk.

“With strong sales around the country, the estimated jackpot for Tuesday night’s Mega Millions drawing has been raised,” lottery officials said in a statement (via Reuters).

Though the odds of winning the Mega Millions is about 1 in 259 million, that didn’t stop people from lining up to buy tickets and dreaming about what they might do if they won.

Some people had high aspirations, like one comedian on Twitter who said he dreamed about owning his own basketball league. Others were more practical.

“I’d like to get my car paid off. I’d like to get insurance for my family members who don’t have insurance,” Teresa Hancock told WDRB in Louisville.

It will likely take into Wednesday to know if there was a winner for Tuesday’s Mega Millions drawing, or if the prize has a chance to approach record levels.

The winning Mega Millions numbers for July 5 are now in — 29, 64, 46, 53, 73, and Mega Ball 10.

[Photo by Alan Diaz/AP Images]

Share this article: Mega Millions Winning Numbers For July 5: See The Winning Combination For Tuesday’s $454 Million Jackpot
mega millions
More from Inquisitr