There’s Mega excitement brewing for Mega Millions as the jackpot surges past $550 million for just the seventh time in the game’s 21-year history! After no ticket matched all six numbers in the July 11 drawing – the white balls 10, 17, 33, 51 and 64, plus the gold Mega Ball 5 – the estimated jackpot for tonight’s drawing on Friday, July 14, is $560 million ($281.1 million cash).
The current roll began after the jackpot was last won in New York on April 18, and Friday’s drawing will be the 25th in this sequence.
While the jackpot remains elusive, there are plenty of winning tickets across all prize tiers. In the July 11 drawing alone, there were a total of 1,535,437 winning tickets at all prize levels. Three tickets matched the five white balls to win the standard second-tier prize of $1 million; they were sold in California, South Dakota and Wisconsin.
Across the country, 59 tickets matched four white balls plus the Mega Ball to win the third-tier prize. Fourteen of those tickets are worth $20,000 each, because they included the optional Megaplier (available in most states with an extra $1 purchase), which was 2X on Tuesday night. The other 45 third-tier winning tickets are worth $10,000 each.
Since the last jackpot was won on April 18, there have been a total of more than 14.2 million winning tickets at all non-jackpot prize levels, ranging from $2 up to $3 million. These include 19 second-tier prizes of $1 million or more, won in 14 different jurisdictions from coast to coast: California, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Missouri, New Mexico, Ohio, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas and Wisconsin.
This year started out with six jackpot winners in less than four months – a number far more typical of a full year! The first was a big one – $1.348 billion won in Maine on January 13, the second-largest prize awarded in Mega Millions history. That was followed by three quick wins. The very next drawing, on January 17, produced a $20 million win in New York. Two drawings later, $33 million was won in Massachusetts on January 24, and just two drawings after that, Massachusetts repeated with another jackpot win, this time at $31 million. Then came two more wins in New York, at $483 million on April 14 followed by $20 million on April 18. That was the first time in Mega Millions history that two jackpots have been won in the same state in consecutive drawings.
