Powerball’s current $1.7 billion jackpot is the longest a mega-prize has gone without being claimed — but experts say there’s a 50-50 chance someone will buy a winning ticket from here on out.
The huge jackpot has gone five drawings worth at least $1 billion after players hit on Monday, with the sixth drawing coming on Christmas Eve Wednesday night.
That’s the longest a billion-dollar jackpot has gone without being won — the previous record holder being the Oct. 2023 jackpot, which found a winner after five billion-dollar drawings.
September’s $1.787 billion jackpot was won after three drawings after the pool hit $1 billion, while the all-time largest $2.04 billion Powerball jackpot in 2022 was won after three 10-figure drawings.
Powerball’s other two billion-dollar jackpots — from 2016 and 2023 — found winners on the first drawings after crossing that threshold for a total of two billion-dollar drawings.
But the current record is merely random, with the odds of a winner being found soaring to about 50% once a jackpot reaches $1 billion, according to lottery experts.
“As the jackpot climbs toward a billion dollars, ticket sales surge, and the odds of a winning ticket being sold jump to roughly 50 percent — essentially a coin flip,” Davidson University mathematician Tim Chartier told The Post.
“We typically see only a small number of drawings at or above the billion-dollar level. But flip a coin often enough and you’ll occasionally see three or four heads in a row, which is simply randomness at work,” he added. “Eventually tails shows up.”
Below the $1 billion threshold, however, the odds of finding a winner are much lower as fewer people are drawn by the enormous jackpot.
“When the jackpot is around $500 million, fewer tickets are sold, and the chance that someone wins the jackpot is only about five percent,” Chartier said.
But a heads or tails chance of finding a winner somewhere in the country does not equate to greater odds of being that lucky person — an individual’s chance of winning remains an astronomically unlikely 1 in 292.2 million.
However, somebody, somewhere will take the win.
“In the lottery, that ‘tails’ is the life-changing drawing that produces a winner,” Chartier said.
Despite the enormous prize, the current jackpot is still only the fourth largest in history.
The $1.7 billion is worth $781.3 million before taxes for winners who choose to take home the lump sum, or about $58.6 million annually pre-tax for winners who choose the annuity option.
Wednesday’s drawing is scheduled for 11 p.m. ET.
Read the full article here
