The soaring Mega Millions jackpot is capturing the attention of lottery enthusiasts nationwide! With no ticket matching all six numbers from Friday night’s draw — white balls 6, 23, 41, 59, 63, and the gold Mega Ball 25 — the jackpot has skyrocketed to an estimated $800 million ($401.8 million cash) for the upcoming draw on Tuesday, September 10. This impressive prize ranks just below the game’s six record-breaking jackpots of over $1 billion.
The total number of winning tickets across all non-jackpot prize tiers has been growing along with the jackpot, which was last won at $552 million in Illinois on June 4. In the 27 drawings since then, there have been more than 20.7 million winning tickets sold. These include 57 second-tier prizes of $1 million or more, won in 25 different jurisdictions from coast to coast: Arizona, California, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, Washington and Wisconsin.
Six of those 57 second-tier winning tickets were sold for the September 6 drawing alone! One, in Ohio, is worth $2 million because it included the optional Megaplier (available in most states with an extra $1 purchase), which was 2X Friday night. The other five win the standard $1 million prize, and were sold in California, Florida, Illinois, New Hampshire and Texas.
Also in Friday night’s drawing, 49 tickets across the country matched four white balls plus the Mega Ball to win the third-tier prize. Ten of those are worth $20,000 each because they also included the optional Megaplier; the other 39 take home the standard $10,000 each.
In total, there were 1,699,484 winning tickets across all prize tiers in the September 6 drawing.
Note: Prize amounts in California will vary, as they are calculated on a pari-mutuel basis.
Only two Mega Millions jackpots have been won so far this year. Before the Illinois win on June 4, $1.128 billion was won in New Jersey; that enormous prize is still unclaimed (winners in New Jersey have one year from the drawing date to claim).
Mega Millions is the only lottery game that has produced six jackpots exceeding $1 billion. All were won in different states – South Carolina was the first in 2018, followed by Michigan in 2021, Illinois in 2022, Maine in early 2023, Florida last August and New Jersey in March. The Florida prize on August 8, 2023, is the game’s current record jackpot at $1.602 billion.
Tickets are sold in 45 states, Washington, D.C., and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Tickets are $2 each; in most jurisdictions, players can add the Megaplier for an additional $1 to multiply their non-jackpot prizes. Half of the proceeds from the sale of each Mega Millions ticket remains in the state where the ticket was sold, where the money supports designated good causes and retailer commissions.
Drawings are conducted at 11 p.m. Eastern Time on Tuesdays and Fridays in Atlanta, Georgia. The overall odds of winning any Mega Millions prize are 1 in 24; the odds of winning the jackpot are 1 in 302,575,350.
