California Lottery: $89 Million: California lottery fever hits as jackpot rises
LARGEST CALIFORNIA LOTTERY JACKPOT IN 2 YEARS
California lottery players woke up Sunday morning to find a SuperLotto Plus jackpot that hasn't been so big since 2004 — the kind of jackpot that will have people standing in long lines at the local convenience store.
The jackpot in the California SuperLotto Plus lottery game grew to $89 million Sunday — currently the largest lottery jackpot in the world, and the game's largest jackpot in two years.
None of the tickets sold for Saturday night's $82 million drawing matched all five lotto numbers and the Mega number. The next drawing will be Wednesday night.
There were 2 second-prize winners from Saturday night's drawing, matching all five lotto numbers but not the Mega number to win $83,682 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 Saturday's drawing are:
- Tickets matching 4 lotto numbers plus the Mega number win $1,442
- Tickets matching 4 lotto numbers but not the Mega number win $104
- Tickets matching 3 lotto numbers plus the Mega number win $53
- Tickets matching 3 lotto numbers but not the Mega number win $11
- Tickets matching 2 lotto numbers plus the Mega number win $10
- Tickets matching 1 lotto number plus the Mega number win $1
- Tickets matching only the Mega number win $1
The winning numbers from Saturday's drawing were: 4, 20, 36, 41, and 44. The Mega number was 13.
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.)