Brace yourself for lottery fever as the Mega Millions jackpot has once again crossed the billion-dollar mark, swelling to a cool $1.05 billion for the Tuesday, August 1 drawing.
That’s right, a billion with a “B!”
This humongous jackpot, which equals the fourth-largest Mega Millions prize to date, has been on a roll since it was last bagged by a lucky player in New York on April 18.
And it’s not just about that elusive jackpot; the heat is up across the other eight prize tiers, too. For the July 28 drawing, a mind-blowing total of 3,157,597 tickets turned out to be winners. And 586,903 of them had even tacked on the optional Megaplier for an extra buck, boosting their standard non-jackpot prizes by a whole 5 times.
The numbers from Friday night’s draw were the white balls 5, 10, 28, 52, and 63, plus the gold Mega Ball 18. There was a whopping $5 million win in Pennsylvania, where one of the five tickets matched all five white balls, winning the game’s second-tier prize. Then, there were tickets in Arizona, California, and New York each taking home a million.
In addition to the million-dollar winners, 92 lucky ticket holders across the country matched four white balls plus the Mega Ball, landing the third-tier prize. Fourteen of those, which included the Megaplier option, are now worth $50,000 each, while the remaining 78 get a tidy $10,000 each.
Since the last jackpot win on April 18, lottery fans have seen a staggering 26.4 million winning tickets, with prizes ranging from a modest $2 up to an incredible $5 million. And get this: 46 of these were second-tier prizes of $1 million or more!
The beginning of 2023 saw six jackpot winners in less than four months, an unusual occurrence, given the random nature of lottery draws. The first was a record breaker at $1.348 billion won in Maine on January 13, the second-largest in Mega Millions history. New York alone had two consecutive jackpot wins in April, a first in the game’s history.
Mega Millions has awarded four jackpots exceeding $1 billion in the years 2018, 2021, 2022, and 2023; one more is set to join the club soon. Draws take place at 11 p.m. Eastern Time on Tuesdays and Fridays right here in Atlanta, Georgia.
Half of each Mega Millions ticket’s sale proceeds stay in the state where the ticket was bought, supporting good causes and local retailers.
Here’s a quick look at the top ten Mega Millions jackpots:
- $1.537 billion on October 23, 2018, with a single ticket sold in South Carolina
- $1.348 billion on January 13, 2023, with a single ticket sold in Maine
- $1.337 billion on July 29, 2022, with a single ticket sold in Illinois
- $1.05 billion on January 22, 2021, with a single ticket sold in Michigan
- $1.05 billion (estimated) for August 1, 2023
- $656 million on March 30, 2012, with three tickets sold in Illinois, Kansas, and Maryland
- $648 million on December 17, 2013, with two tickets sold in California and Georgia
- $543 million on July 24, 2018, with a single ticket sold in California
- $536 million on July 8, 2016, with a single ticket sold in Indiana
- $533 million on March 30, 2018, with a single ticket sold in New Jersey
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