New York (WABC) – A single ticket holder in Maine will celebrate a very happy new year after a ticket matched all six numbers drawn in Friday night’s Mega Millions drawing.
The prize is approximately $1.35 billion ($724.6 million in cash), the second largest jackpot in the game’s history!
Numbers drawn on Thursday evening: 30, 43, 45, 46, 61 and the golden Mega Ball 14.
The jackpot is the second largest in Mega Millions history!
The jackpot was last rolled on Oct. 14, when a $502 million jackpot was split with winning tickets in California and Florida.
This 26-draw jackpot race ends in the January 13 drawing with 7,072,832 winning tickets across all nine draw levels, including the jackpot winning ticket. Fourteen tickets matched all five white balls to win the game’s second prize of $1 million. Four of them were sold in New York, two in California, and one each in Florida, Illinois, Kansas, Kentucky, Missouri, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Texas.
164 tickets to match the four white balls and the Mega Ball have the third prize. 27 of them include the optional Megaplier (available in most states with an additional $1 purchase) that is 2X on Friday night; they are worth $20,000 each. The remaining 137 secondary winning tickets receive the standard $10,000 prize.
The odds of winning the Mega Millions drawing are one in 303 million.
Friday night’s jackpot win is the seventh Friday the 13th since the game’s inception in 2002 and the first on such a day since October 2017.
Michigan has been particularly lucky with Friday the 13th Mega Millions jackpots, winning four of them (June 2008, May 2011, June 2014 and October 2017). That 2017 jackpot was shared with a winner in Rhode Island. Other Friday the 13th jackpots have been won in New York (March 2009) and Ohio (November 2015). But none of them came close to the estimated $1.35 billion this time.
Here’s a look at the 10 biggest jackpots won in the US and the states where the winning tickets were sold:
1. $2.04 billion, Powerball, November. 8, 2022 (one ticket, from California)
2. $1.586 billion, Powerball, January. 13, 2016 (triple tickets, California, Florida, Tennessee)
3. $1.537 billion, Mega Millions, October. 23, 2018 (one ticket, from South Carolina)
4. $1.35 billion, Mega Millions, January. 13, 2023 (one ticket from Maine)
5. $1.337 billion, Mega Millions, July 29, 2022 (one ticket, from Illinois)
6. $1.05 billion, Mega Millions, January. 22, 2021 (one ticket, from Michigan)
7. $768.4 million, Powerball, March 27, 2019 (one ticket, from Wisconsin)
8. $758.7 million, Powerball, August. 23, 2017 (one ticket, from Massachusetts)
9. $731.1 million, Powerball, January. 20, 2021 (one ticket, from Maryland)
10. $699.8 million, Powerball, October. 4, 2021 (one ticket, from California)
RELATED: Here’s what you can get if you win
Credit for recent big prizes is actually about math — and harder odds.
In the fall of 2017, lottery officials approved changes to Mega Millions that increased the odds from 1 in 258.9 million to 1 in 302.6 million. They made similar changes to Powerball in October 2015, worsening the odds from 1 in 175.2 million to 1 in 292.2 million.
The idea was that by making jackpots less common, ticket revenues could increase from week to week, creating huge prizes that would attract attention and attract even more players who won top prizes of around $100 million or $200 million.
In August 2021, Powerball added a third weekly drawing, which kept the jackpot rolling and growing even faster because people had more chances to play and lose. Mega Millions is stuck with two weeks of drawings.
Nine of the top 10 biggest lottery wins since 2017 have been won thanks to these moves.
Mega Millions is played in 45 states, as well as Washington, DC and the US Virgin Islands.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
power ball drawings are also posted here on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Saturdays at 10:59 p.m.
Mega Millions drawings air Tuesdays and Fridays at 11 p.m
The New York Lottery is the largest and most profitable lottery in North America, contributing billions of dollars to support education in New York State.
Revenue is distributed to local school districts in the same statutory manner used to distribute other state aid to education. According to the New York lottery, the formula takes into account both school district size and income level; larger, lower-income school districts receive a proportionally larger share of Lottery school funding.
For more information about the New York lottery and to see the lottery results, apply nylottery.ny.gov..
New Yorkers who struggle with gambling addiction or know someone who does can find help by calling the state’s toll-free, confidential HOPEline at 1-877-8-HOPENY (1-877-846-7369) or by texting HOPENY. 467369). Standard text rates may apply.
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