By Todd Northrop
It doesn't have the monster jackpot increases that Powerball has been experiencing lately, but the current Mega Millions jackpot run-up continues to offer the biggest jackpot in the world for yet another drawing.
After no lottery tickets matched all 5 numbers plus the Mega Ball Friday night, the multi-state Mega Millions jackpot was increased to an estimated $189 million.
Tuesday night we may see a very lucky mega-jackpot winner, or else the Mega Millions lottery game probably will enter into the realm of $200+ million jackpots.
The lump-sum cash value stands at a staggering $129.9 million.
Tuesday's Mega Millions jackpot is the accumulation of 18 consecutive drawings without a top prize winner. The current jackpot run-up started on July 30 as a $12 million grand prize — it has been two months since Mega Millions has had a jackpot winner.
Players should note that jackpot amounts are conservative estimates provided by the lotteries, and are often somewhat higher by the time the drawing occurs. Occasionally the official jackpot estimate is raised even before the drawing, due to larger-than-expected sales.
In Friday night's Mega Millions drawing, there was no jackpot winner, but 13 lucky players matched the first 5 numbers for a $250,000 prize: 1 from Arizona, 1 from California, 1 from Illinois, 2 from New Jersey, 2 from New York, 1 from Ohio, 1 from Oklahoma, 2 from Pennsylvania, and 2 from Texas.
The California winner will be awarded $259,368, since California awards all prizes in a pari-mutuel formula, which calculates the prize amount based on the number of tickets sold and the number of winners in each prize category. Because there was only one second prize-winning ticket in California, that one ticket will take home the entire pool of money allocated for the second prize category.
Also, a total of 47 tickets matched four of the first five numbers plus the Mega Ball to win a $10,000 prize. Of those tickets, 5 were sold in California, where the prize awarded this drawing is $14,147.
The Mega Millions winning numbers for Friday, September 27, 2013, were 9, 23, 27, 49, and 51, with Mega Ball number 38. The Megaplier number was 2.
Following the Friday drawing, the Mega Millions annuity jackpot estimate was raised $16 million from its previous amount of $173 million. The cash value was raised by $10.6 million, from its previous amount of $119.3 million.
The next Mega Millions drawing will take place Tuesday evening at 11:00 pm Eastern Time.
Mega Millions is currently offered for sale in 43 states, plus Washington, D.C. and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Tickets cost $1 each.
Major game change coming in October
Following the drawing on October 18, 2013, Mega Millions players will be able to buy tickets for the new Mega Millions game, featuring more "white ball" numbers and fewer Mega Ball numbers, a bigger starting jackpot, easier-to-win lower-tier prizes, and the possibility to win up to $5 million without winning the jackpot.
(See Mega Millions lottery game's redesign aims at bigger jackpots, better overall odds, Lottery Post, July 17, 2013.)
The first drawing to include the new game features will be on Oct. 22, 2013.
Lottery officials expect that the upcoming changes to Mega Millions will result in bigger jackpots that occur more often, without raising ticket prices.
For a complete set of game descriptions, results, history, and all questions regarding Mega Millions, lottery players are encouraged to visit USA Mega (www.usamega.com), a Web site that caters to the Unites States's two multi-state lottery games, Powerball and Mega Millions.
The Tuesday night Mega Millions winning numbers will be published at USA Mega minutes after the drawing takes place.
That's more like it. Keep rolling baby, until the implementation of the new matrix. Then watch the heavyweight fight between PB and the new and improved MM. That will be a joy to behold.
Looking forwards to the new game
and JP going up faster
Good luck everyone, feel a Michigan win coming on!
The near destruction of the Megamillions game because of the $2 Powerball ticket - and the resulting jackpot fatigue - has certainly reduced the overall sales increase figures for the state lotteries, and, I think, may end up with them spinning their wheels.
There is no reason that the new matrix should be any better. There isn't a real increase in the $12 million starting jackpot, since it's merely being masked by changing the annuity scheme from 26 years to 30 years. What we might see is it taking 30 rollovers, more than half a year, to reach $300 million annuity, a weaker annuity in terms of cash value.
This would be opposed to the old situation, where Megamillions generated several jackpots a year that sold over $100 million tickets, a few close to $200 million. This last jackpot sold about 33 million tickets, this on an 18th draw. The last MM 18th draw produced sales of 190 million and rolled over to produce a jackpot that sold 651 million tickets. This last drawing represents a loss of 160 million in sales, about 80 million in revenue.
This represents the true "success" of the $2 powerball ticket, robbing Peter to pay Paul.
I think the state lotteries will find that they shot themselves in the foot.
Yea, I wonder what their plan is if there's 10-15 second place prizes at 5x and the jackpot is only 50mill.
30 rollovers would not be the norm. Most likely is a reduction from 12 to 8 jackpots per year with the new MM matrix, with higher average jackpot values.
Yes, I agree with you 100%. They have shot themselves in the foot. I will be back to playing powerball.
Good luck to all ............ but I hope it rolls right into the first Mega Millions Jackpot win for Pennsylvania!
Woo HOO big $$$$$$$$$$
I doubt it. One would need to be a fool to play a game with longer odds and no added value as regularly as one plays a game with shorter odds, even if the shorter odds were astronomical already.
Granted, there are lots of fools, something recent trends in lotterys demonstrate, but I expect this game to wither and die. It has certainly withered.
The Pennsylvania lottery tried exactly this approach with their lotto game, and as I recall, it spent close to a year rolling over continuously with very low jackpot jumps before PA simply shut the game down.
We can couple this with jackpot fatigue. Years ago, if a jackpot was around $100,000,000 annuity, long lines formed everywhere. Today such a jackpot produces yawns.
If the new MM game takes the same amount of time to reach $100M as it does now - this one took 13 draws - the game is dead.
Time will tell.
Every picture tells a story..
l see California taking this one- then again, l could be wrong.
Wow... Mega Millions is really struggling. I hope they can turn this game back around and make it fun again to play with their new matrix. MM has always been my favorite, but I find myself lately playing the more expensive PB because of the larger and more frequent won jackpots.
I'll take some of that money
California will eventually when but it seems it can take a couple of years for a new state to win. I could be wrong!
Ohio did it right away.
I betcha Ohio gets it again because their is a pattern it goes in and out of Ohio and New Jersey and New York!!! It's Ohio watch and see!!
$189 Million Woo Hoo
You doubt it? So you're sticking with your prediction of 2 JP wins a year? Ummm...OK.
MM does a few billion a year in revenue, this is no small time state lotto 6/49 game. I'll bet they know a little bit more about the market reaction than you do. They did provide better overall odds of winning any prize, as well as increased megaplier. And the chances of winning the JP dollar for dollar, $2 on PB versus $2 on new MM, isn't much of a difference at all.
Any I don't think it's necessary to call people fools who play. Many understand the odds, and only play for the entertainment of a dollar and a dream. Gotta be in it to win it. No need for name calling bro, chill out.
LOL!
Hope you're right, I plan to play at least 20 lines Tuesday and it's about time I won a jackpot.
Yeah, I doubt it.
The game has been averaging sales of less than $20M per draw this year. That's before they make it worse. That works out to be about a billion per year on a system that is now going to be 1:250,000,000.
That's not a "few" billion per year. It's a couple of billion, which is pretty miserable for a population of the size living in areas where tickets are sold.
You expect a lot of big jackpots? Um...um...um...
What I said, in case you missed it, was that the PA lottery ran for nearly a year without producing a jackpot, but...
...the odds were much better than 1 to 250,000,000.
There are no state lotto games, zero, that have odds as long as the current MM or Powerball.
It's pretty basic math that a larger number of tickets purchased can be offset by making the odds longer.
That's why the lottery keeps making them longer and longer and longer.
It is possible that the game will produce 52 jackpots a year, not likely, but most lottery players would understand - this shouldn't be mysterious - that the jackpots will be small. That is, in fact, what happened this year, 8 winners, small jackpots, only one of which was over $100M annuity.
I merely note, however, to repeat my original comment, that the last 18th draw, sold 190M tickets, and this one sold 33M. The last 18th to 19th draw advertised a jackpot jump of close to $300M, this one is advertising a jackpot jump of $16M.
We have gone two and one half months without a winner, and the advertised jackpot is less than $200M and the odds are still around 1:175M. Four runs like this would eat a year.
The new lottery will start with a base jackpot of $15M, with a cash value nearly equal to that of the current $12M, since they've lengthened the annuity time by 4 years to inflate the advertised value, but not the true value.
You see this as inspirational for players maybe?
To each his own.
Now, you might be inspired to buy even more tickets than ever because the odds are longer, but to me that doesn't make much sense. As I told you before, in another thread, I play by expectation value, so speaking only for myself, I will be buying far fewer tickets, which is, of course, a good thing.
As for what will happen on the grand scale, I have my prediction, you have yours. Again, time will tell.
I meant WIN, sorry
MM used to have a few billion in sales, but the reason they're changing the game is that those days are gone. The current run took 14 drawings to reach a jackpot of $119 million (annuity, of course). At the current annuity to cash ratio that $119 million was just under $82 million cash. That represents sales of about 259 million tickets, which just happens to match the odds for the new format.
At $1 per ticket, it took them 7 weeks to generate just under $260 million in revenue. At that rate the revenue for a full year will be a bit shy of the $2 billion mark. Since we should expect 1 jackpot winning ticket for every 259 million they sell, it also suggests 7.5 winning tickets per year, assuming future sales are similar to what we've seen during the current drawing. BTW, I don't know where you got the idea that Prob988 said anything about 2 winners per year. He suggested 30 drawings to reach $300 million, which is considerably more than what we can expect as an average jackpot.
That leaves the question of what future sales will be like. Despite the substantial increase in the odds, there's still a much better chance of winning the jackpot by spending $2 than there is with Powerball. Since the chances of winning a jackpot are almost twice as high for a $2 bet MM would already be outselling PB if that was all that mattered, unless most players are too stupid to know what the odds and prizes are. If PB's current success over MM is based on the odds of winning other prizes, then the new format isn't going to do jack to improve sales, except when it results in really large jackpots.
The 2nd place is being raised to match PB's, but the odds of winning it, even with a $2 bet will be only 60% of the odds for PB's 2nd place prize. The 3rd place prize is being halved from $10k to $5k. At half the price of a PB ticket that's comparable to PB's prize, since the chance of winning is only slightly worse than for PB. The other prizes follow the same pattern - at best, they're comparable to PB. I see absolutely nothing in the new format to make MM a better deal than it is now, except that we'll occasionally have a very slim chance of winning a very large jackpot. Of course even that is being served up smothered in BS sauce, since the new annuity structure means that the cash prize for any given advertised jackpot will be smaller than it is now.
I'll be surprised if this change doesn't make sales even worse. MM officials claim th echnage is based on market research and watching what heppened with PB. Of course anyone who actually watched PB would know that PB tried a similar strategy with no sucess, and that's what prompted them to reduce the odds and double the ticket price. If MM is still a successful game a year from now it will probably cost $2 and have odds that are close to what they are now.
yawn
I hate to state the obvious, but if you're going to try and come across like a know-it-all, you better get your numbers straight. You say "30 rollovers, more than half a year" which is not equivalent, so I have to interpret what you meant. And again you say "$20M per draw ... works out to a billion a year" which is correct if you only count 1 draw per week, not two.(52 versus 104)
Anyway, with that aside, I never said anything about the new MM matrix being inspirational, where do you get that from? Don't put words in my mouth to try and distract the issue. I said there no need for you to call players, if they choose to play, as being fools. Calling others fools does not elevate you above them.
The numbers are pretty obvious, and their expectation is that with base sales staying the same, average jackpots values will increase, boosting sales during periods of large jackpots. But yes, time will tell.
Regarding the Lottery or most anything else in life...
No intelligent idea can gain general acceptance unless some stupidity is mixed in with it.
Fernando Pessoa
Woo Hoo! Dollar and a Dream! Go MM, go! Gonna get my tickets!
On the other hand... 2 tickets in Texas won 2nd prize.. both in North Texas. Hoping for a roll Tuesday because I'm driving to Dallas Friday for the State Fair. I'll be buying tickets while I'm in the luckier area.
$189 MILLION: Mega Millions jackpot rolls again
Good Luck everyone
Given the astronomical odds of winning, I understand that if one cannot afford to play every drawing, a seemingly logical tactic would be to jump in once the jackpot hits a certain level. Of course, if that person only can spend $5 per week on lottery, a more sensible strategy would be to play the mega jackpot games (PB/MM) once a week and throw the other $2 toward state lottery or daily games. But most of the people I observe that buy lottery tickets "in the hood" play multiple combos on pick 3 or pick 4 and then a few QPs on whatever is trending the highest in terms of jackpot amount. So they play the most for cigarette and drinks money, and a few dollars toward an unimaginable dream. I also see longtime numbers lottery players driving same vehicle for past 5 or 6 years (and it was 10 years removed since being new even then) get out with their plastic sleeve protected lottery slips you know they spent hours meditating over, then walk in and drop either a Jackson or a Grant on all of their lottery plays. And for good measure when the clock is ticking ever so close to the sales cutoff time, they verbally ask for certain pick 3 or pick 4 combos while the few folks waiting in line to snap up a few QPs roll their eyes, fold their arms, and tap their feet, knowing this is their only chance to buy ticket for that night's drawing because the nearest other lottery selling convenience store is 5 minutes away and it is 2153.
I don't care about the jackpot until I have a winning ticket. So if mega is at $12 million, I play. If Powerball is at $40 million, I play. My only criteria for exchanging my dollar for a dream with jackpot games is that I end up a multimillionaire AFTER I have paid all applicable taxes. An ill-equip person accustomed to living paycheck to paycheck will blow through $200 million just as quickly as they would $10 million because the locust cloud that follows them will be larger at the higher amount. I use pesticide to repel such pests and this is my pesticide: if you did not contact me to check up on how I was doing before I won, do not bother to contact me after I win. Also, I do not respond to calls or visits to contribute to your charitable endeavor. Feel free to send me literature...I may or may not take time to look at it. Before I contribute to any charitable organization, I want to see the tax filings, all employee and director compensation, and pictures of the head honchos houses. I think many charitable organizations, including the Susan G Kommen Breast Cancer Foundation would fail my litmus test.
Wow Pa, that was deep. I loved it though.
WORD!!! OldSchoolPa
Charity begins at home.
Where does it begin for the homeless?
No one won. The jackpot over 200 millions for this Friday Mega Millions.
At the local shelter?
There was one winner sold by the Maryland Lottery for the last drawing's $189,000,000 grand prize. I guess I was wrong. I was hoping someone from Michigan.
Who could be the lucky winner for this huge jackpot prize?! I wonder when I am going to win this huge jackpot prize. I need to enhance my strategies to uplift my chances of winning.