Mega billions
The jackpot for tomorrow’s Mega Millions draw is expected to stand at $1.55 billion, marking the third-largest lottery prize in US history and exceeding the current Mega Millions record of $1.537 billion that was set back in October 2018.
The prize pot has been building since April and, if a winning ticket is drawn, the lucky player could be offered a $757.2 million lump-sum cash option. If it feels like lotto jackpots have been getting bigger recently, that’s because they have — there's been four $1 billion jackpots in 2023 so far, as many as all the previous years combined.
Lotto luck
Higher ticket prices and interest rates have played a big part in the jumbo jackpots, as did changing the odds in 2019, with the likelihood of your Mega Millions ticket scooping you millions or billions of dollars going from 1 in 258.9 million to 1 in 302.6 million. This has meant that more than 115 days have passed since the last jackpot winner — though a lucky few did get richer after Friday’s draw, when seven $1 million prizes were handed out for matching 5 balls.
The $1.55 billion prize pot would be the highest in Mega Millions history, around $13 million more than the jackpot collected by an anonymous player in South Carolina 5 years ago. Even so, you're more likely to hit the billion figure playing Mega Millions compared to Powerball, as we charted in November — only two jackpots have met the threshold, compared to Mega Millions’ five.
