Last week I emailed a question to the lottery, this is their reply...
Thank you for reaching out to us with your questions.
All prizes in Wisconsin's Megabucks are funded solely out of the tickets purchased. (Approximately 53.5% of each dollar played is allocated to prizes.) As the Megabucks jackpot was recently won, sales must be enough to fund the minimum $400,000 starting cash option before you will see that cash option number begin to increase, and the same can be said of the advertised jackpot. A reminder the advertised, estimated Megabucks jackpot is the annuity amount paid out over 25 years. The annuity amount is based on the amount of cash on hand used to purchase Government Bonds that grow to the annuity amount over 25 years. In summary, as sales continue to increase for the game, the jackpot will usually also rise – but it does take several weeks to start to increase after a jackpot is won and the annuity is reset to $1 million, depending on ticket sales and Government Bonds rates.
Regarding your question about tickets sold each week, please see the below table with Megabucks ticket count and sales for each of the 4 weeks leading up to and the 4 weeks after the jackpot was won at the end of April. Since tickets can vary greatly on the cost, the sales amount would be a better indicator of how this impacts the jackpot amount. I provided both below for the period requested.
Game Name
|
Calendar Year Week Number
|
Calendar Weekending Date
|
Count
|
Amount
|
Megabucks
|
13
|
3/28/2020
|
224,878
|
$ 521,578
|
Megabucks
|
14
|
4/4/2020
|
222,865
|
$ 515,179
|
Megabucks
|
15
|
4/11/2020
|
222,659
|
$ 511,513
|
Megabucks
|
16
|
4/18/2020
|
234,178
|
$ 543,368
|
Megabucks
|
17
|
4/25/2020
|
238,879
|
$ 550,704
|
Megabucks
|
18
|
5/2/2020
|
126,852
|
$ 227,405
|
Megabucks
|
19
|
5/9/2020
|
124,491
|
$ 216,027
|
Megabucks
|
20
|
5/16/2020
|
124,405
|
$ 214,599
|
Megabucks
|
21
|
5/23/2020
|
124,017
|
$ 215,165
|
Megabucks
|
22
|
5/30/2020
|
59,184
|
$ 102,993
|
As for the future of Megabucks, we continually monitor its performance as we do for all of our games. The game still is very popular among its longtime players, so there is no current plan to end this lotto game.
Best wishes to you!