The jackpot of Friday’s US Mega Millions lottery draw passed the $1 billion mark, making it the fourth-largest prize in history, its organizer announced Wednesday.
The jackpot of this lottery has been growing for more than three months, as have the dreams of fortune of its players, without anyone having managed to match all six numbers in the previous 29 draws.
On Friday, just over $1 billion will be up for grabs, according to a Mega Millions press release.
After Tuesday night’s drawing, the influx of players eager to find out if they had gotten extremely rich caused the Mega Millions site to go down for nearly two hours, the group said.
1 in 303 million chances
The chances of winning this tempting amount are just 1 in almost 303 million. For comparison, the chance of being struck by lightning is 1 in 1 million, according to data from US health authorities.
The biggest gain in history was $1.586 billion. It was won in January 2016 in the other great American lottery, Powerball, but the prize money was divided among three winners.
The $1 billion unveiled Friday represents what the lucky winner would get if they agreed to spread the payout over 30 years.
If you wanted to receive your prize all at once, you would only receive a modest $603 million – some of which would then be tax-deductible, according to an estimate by Mega Millions.
Mega Millions was created in 2002. Its formula has been modified several times to reduce the probability of winning the jackpot, which has allowed the jackpot to be regularly increased to several hundred million dollars.
Source: BFM TV
