California Lottery: $70 million: California SuperLotto Plus rolls again
The jackpot in the California SuperLotto Plus lottery game grew to $70 million Thursday — currently the second-largest lottery jackpot in the world.
None of the tickets sold for Wednesday night's $64 million drawing matched all five lotto numbers and the Mega number. The next drawing will be Saturday night.
There were three second-prize winners from Wednesday night's drawing, matching all five lotto numbers but not the Mega number to win $42,671 each.
In addition, there are seven other ways that California SuperLotto Plus tickets can win prizes. (Each way of winning is called a "prize level".) The prize levels, and resulting value of each winning ticket is based upon the number of the first five lotto numbers that are matched (in any order), plus whether or not the ticket matches the Mega number.
The other seven winning ticket prize amounts for Wednesday's drawing are:
- Tickets matching 4 lotto numbers plus the Mega number win $1,333
- Tickets matching 4 lotto numbers but not the Mega number win $102
- Tickets matching 3 lotto numbers plus the Mega number win $55
- Tickets matching 3 lotto numbers but not the Mega number win $10
- Tickets matching 2 lotto numbers plus the Mega number win $10
- Tickets matching 1 lotto number plus the Mega number win $2
- Tickets matching only the Mega number win $1
The winning numbers from Wednesday's drawing were: 9, 12, 36, 38, and 41. The Mega number was 5.
Players pick five numbers from 1 to 47 and a Mega number from 1 to 27 on their playslip, or they can choose a Quick Pick, which lets the lottery machine pick random numbers for them.
On any play, a person can mark "Quick Pick" to select just the five numbers, or just the Mega number, or both.
California uses "pari-mutuel" prize payouts at all prize levels to determine how much money each winning ticket is awarded. Each prize level is allocated a percentage of the total sales for the drawing, and the actual prize amounts per winning ticket are calculated by dividing the prize level's allocated funds by the number of winners at that level.
If there are no winning tickets at a certain prize level, the funds allocated to that prize level "roll over" to the next drawing, increasing the value of winning tickets at that prize level for the next drawing.
California's lottery regulations require all California lottery games to use this pari-mutuel payout method, even including Mega Millions. (All other Mega Millions states use a fixed-prize payout method for all prize levels except the jackpot.)