"The 40 roll record for Powerball is $2,040.1 million - more than double the current jackpot. "
A lot more than double this one. The cash value of the PB record jackpot was a hair over $997 million. If this run gets to the "same" 2.04 billion it will only be worth $941 million, coming up $56 million shy of the record. If this run gets to 2.05 billion PB will brag about a new record, but to simply equal the record we need an annuity of $2.1627 billion if the interest rates stays the same.
"lottery sales are way down. "
In another thread I said that, as of then, the worksheet on the TX website suggested that Wednesday's jackpot would be only a bit shy of the 1 billion mark assuming sales didn't beat their estimates. The next worksheet revised the sales estimates significantly downward. While the worksheet only shows the estimated jackpot for the next drawing, it shows the estimated chance of a winner for several more drawings, and that tells us how many tickets they expect to sell. Of course the farther ahead they make an estimate he less like it is to be accurate, but the changes are telling.
The first worksheet showed chances of a winner as 18.2%, 22% and 11.9% for this Wednesday through next Monday. That corresponds to sales of 59, 73, and 37 million tickets. The revised estimates with the latest worksheet are 10.6%, 17.4%, and 13.1%, corresponding to sales of 33, 56, and 41 million tickets. The estimate for next Monday is up a bit, but the total estimate is down by 39 million tickets. That's about $26 million cash, or almost 57 million for the annuity value. FWIW, while the Monday estimate is up, estimates for the following Wednesday and Saturday are also down. Monday 12/22 is also up slightly. I can't even begin to guess why sales for Mondays would be up while Wednesdays and Saturdays are down.
Of course we are at a point where sales used to take of so maybe the actual sales for Wednesday will be better than the current prediction, but Monday's actual jackpot was only $5 million more than the estimate, finishing at 880. That was a bit less than what they expected the supported jackpot to be. At any rate, based on the current estimates of the chance for a winner Saturday will be over 1 billion if it rolls, but only by about $10 million. Based on the current estimates it might not even get to 1.5 billion for Christmas eve, if it keep rolling. again based on those current estimates it will probably roll(54% chance) through Wednesday 12/17. There's about a 1 in 3 chance of a big jackpot on Christmas eve.
