After one nationwide lottery gave away a nine-figure jackpot, the Mega Millions jackpot soared past the magical $100 million mark less than one week later. The top prize for Tuesday’s drawing in the Mega Millions lottery will be a staggering $105 million.
There were no jackpot winners, and no second-prize winners, in last Friday’s Mega Millions lottery, which offered a $93 million jackpot. But strong ticket sales of more than 21 million for that lottery drawing helped push the Mega Millions jackpot up by $12 million in one leap.
The nine-figure jackpot marks just the fourth time in 2014 that the 44-state lottery — which also sells tickets in the U.S. Virgin Islands and Washington D.C. — has crossed the $100 million barrier in a single run of drawings with no winner. The last time Mega Millions jumped from eight to nine figures was August 5, when the lottery offered a flat $100 million jackpot after no one won the $87 million offered in the previous drawing.
That run made it as high as $180 million, before a dad of five in Calimesa, California , matched all six Mega Millions numbers to win that massive lottery jackpot. That drawing came on August 22, the last time a Mega Millions lottery jackpot stood at a figure more than $100 million.
On September 24, the other nationwide lottery game, Powerball, saw a San Mateo, California, nail salon worker win an eye-popping $225 million jackpot. The Powerball lottery jackpot escalates quicker than Mega Millions, because the ticket price is $2 instead of $1.
But while both games carry astronomical odds, lottery players actually have a better chance of hitting it big with the Powerball game, where the chances of matching all six numbers are one in 175,223,510.
The Mega Millions odds are just one in 258,890,000. Nonetheless, with more than 1.7 billion Mega Millions lottery tickets sold this year, over 77 drawings, there have been eight winning tickets and seven jackpots won.
While there were no jackpot winners, or even $1 million “Match 5” winners in Friday’s Mega Millions drawing, there were still 1,469,472 tickets that won at least the minimum $1 prize. In total, the lottery game saw players win a total of nearly $2.9 million Friday.
To see whether any of those lottery winnings belong to you, check your September 26 Mega Millions lottery ticket against the following numbers, drawn at 10:59 pm in Atlanta, Georgia.
17 — 26 — 35 — 46 — 62 Mega Ball 9
The cash value of Tuesday’s Mega Millions lottery jackpot, to a winner who takes the prize as a single payment, is estimated at $62.1 million.
