snowbird United States
Member #134,766
November 6, 2012
3 Posts
Offline
please excuse me if this has been asked before, my question is "what is the most number of jackpot winners of a single draw of the Powerball?"
It seems out of all the drawings , there's never been 1 with a high number of winners, ie like say a few hundred. It just seems to me, I follow alot of state run lotteries and have never heard of it happening in thousands of total draws. Neither the lottery websites or google searches seem to help me find the answer as to the Guniess World record would be. Thanks in advance for any help to find my answer.
snowbird United States
Member #134,766
November 6, 2012
3 Posts
Offline
thanks, that is interesting, I just think with Half a billion in prize money over several different draws would spawn some pretty high numbers of winners, just never have seen it reported and was interested in what the record is.
United States
Member #191,892
August 27, 2018
994 Posts
Offline
Multiple winners happen, when several people play numbers they see posted, like on this website.
If there would be a win on one of the Maddogs Challenge numbers posted, etc... then yes, there would be several people with a claimer for getting 5, or 6 numbers.
NY United States
Member #23,834
October 16, 2005
4,777 Posts
Offline
Quote: Originally posted by rattlesnakerich on Dec 30, 2018
please excuse me if this has been asked before, my question is "what is the most number of jackpot winners of a single draw of the Powerball?"
It seems out of all the drawings , there's never been 1 with a high number of winners, ie like say a few hundred. It just seems to me, I follow alot of state run lotteries and have never heard of it happening in thousands of total draws. Neither the lottery websites or google searches seem to help me find the answer as to the Guniess World record would be. Thanks in advance for any help to find my answer.
Wikipedia has a page on lottery jackpot records that lists all US jackpots of $300 million or more. There are 42, and the current MM will be adding a 43rd in the near future. Lots of winners tend to result from lots of tickets, so that would have been a good place to start. It doesn't list the 2001 PB drawing, but MM also had 4 winners on 8/31/07.
"there's never been 1 with a high number of winners, ie like say a few hundred"
You know what the odds are, right? Unless there's something significant about the winning numbers even huge sales aren't very likely to produce more than 4 or 5 winners. Of course the odds were a lot lower in 2001 and 2007, but even if the number of tickets sold is 2 1/2 times the number of possible combinations there's only about a 1 in 8 chance of having more than 5 winners. For more than 10 winners its less than 1 in 500. Neither of the jackpots with 4 winners had all birthday numbers drawn, which has a better chance of producing more winners, but the 2001 PB drawing had sales of 204 million tickets. At the time that was almost exactly 2 1/2 times the odds of 80 million to 1. That's the drawing that started David Lee Edwards on his path to becoming famous.
Perhaps 10 year ago the winning numbers were significant. All but the power ball happened to have been on the fortunes in a batch of fortune cookies. 110 people played the numbers and won the 5+0 prize.
NY United States
Member #23,834
October 16, 2005
4,777 Posts
Offline
Assuming you were running a lottery to maximize profit that might not be a good strategy. Not that the typical lottery player is using good logic in their playing, but bigger jackpots mean bigger sales. For the last MM run sales for the $548 million jackpot were about $116 million. For the advertised jackpot of $1.6 billion sales jumped to almost $740 million. That's three times as much money for the jackpot but more than 6 times as much sales income.
If your advertising makes people realize that the advertised jackpot of $1.6 billion is probably only $800 million or "just" $533 million I'd expect sales to drop significantly.
New Jersey United States
Member #17,842
June 28, 2005
180,983 Posts
Offline
Quote: Originally posted by rattlesnakerich on Dec 30, 2018
please excuse me if this has been asked before, my question is "what is the most number of jackpot winners of a single draw of the Powerball?"
It seems out of all the drawings , there's never been 1 with a high number of winners, ie like say a few hundred. It just seems to me, I follow alot of state run lotteries and have never heard of it happening in thousands of total draws. Neither the lottery websites or google searches seem to help me find the answer as to the Guniess World record would be. Thanks in advance for any help to find my answer.
Same thing happened in California.. there were 5 consecutive numbers (I think it was 14, 15, 16, 17 & 18)... 29 people shared the prize, usually it's 1 or 2...
& you just know all 29 were thinking no one else picked consecutive numbers.... Then the results came out about 30 minutes later.
United States
Member #193,169
October 22, 2018
489 Posts
Offline
Quote: Originally posted by Rexer90 on Jan 1, 2019
Same thing happened in California.. there were 5 consecutive numbers (I think it was 14, 15, 16, 17 & 18)... 29 people shared the prize, usually it's 1 or 2...
& you just know all 29 were thinking no one else picked consecutive numbers.... Then the results came out about 30 minutes later.
Almost 6 years ago. And you can bet there were the usual conspiracy theorists who cited the consecutive numbers as evidence the lottery was rigged, LOL.
NY United States
Member #23,834
October 16, 2005
4,777 Posts
Offline
There are enough drawings for jackpot games that significant numbers have been drawn quite a few times.
In 2006 NY lotto drew straight multiples of 5. The winning numbers were 5 - 10 - 15 - 25 - 30 - 35 and 6 people split the jackpot. There was only 1 2nd place winner in that drawing. Even back then the usual result for NY lotto was a rollover, and multiple jackpot winners are unusual.
If civilization lasts long enough eventually a lottery really will draw 1,2,3,4,5,6 or one of the other very popular combinations as the winning numbers and thousands of people will split the jackpot.
Arizona United States
Member #165,065
March 24, 2015
300 Posts
Offline
Quote: Originally posted by KY Floyd on Jan 3, 2019
There are enough drawings for jackpot games that significant numbers have been drawn quite a few times.
In 2006 NY lotto drew straight multiples of 5. The winning numbers were 5 - 10 - 15 - 25 - 30 - 35 and 6 people split the jackpot. There was only 1 2nd place winner in that drawing. Even back then the usual result for NY lotto was a rollover, and multiple jackpot winners are unusual.
If civilization lasts long enough eventually a lottery really will draw 1,2,3,4,5,6 or one of the other very popular combinations as the winning numbers and thousands of people will split the jackpot.
And when that happens, the guy who picked 1,3,4,5,6,7 will get more money for "second place" than the jackpot winners will get for "winning".
NY United States
Member #23,834
October 16, 2005
4,777 Posts
Offline
"the guy who picked 1,3,4,5,6,7 will get more money for "second place" than the jackpot winners will get for "winning"."
Well, you're making the possibly risky assumption that a straight series with one number missing isn't also a very popular bet. You're probably right, but I wouldn't count on it. Still, I wouldn't play anything similar and wouldn't have any skin in the game, so I'd just sit back and enjoy the irony.