News writer
The Mega Millions jackpot hit $600 million after nobody won Friday's draw.
This number has been reached only eleven times since the game launched in 1996, making this a historic moment - especially since the Mega Millions' pricing and rules changed in April of this year.
More than halfway to $1 billion
The jackpot has rolled over 30 times since June 27, when a Virginia winner landed a $348 million prize.
Friday's draw numbers were 3-18-23-32 and 56, plus the gold Mega Ball 8 - and nobody won the grand prize.
The $600 million jackpot is an estimated annuitized prize, equalling roughly $277.2 million in cash value. If it rolls over once more, it could even breach the top 10 biggest Mega Millions jackpots list.
The Mega Millions jackpot, currently in 10th place, was worth $648 million and was won on December 17, 2013, by Steve Tran from California and Ira Curry from Georgia. Time will tell where the current jackpot will land. Joshua Johnston, lead director for the Mega Millions Consortium, stated:
Six hundred million dollars. When you say it out loud, it really puts it in perspective. That's a huge amount of money that someone has a chance to win Tuesday night. It's a really exciting time to play.
The national draw takes place on Tuesday and Friday night.
Biggest jackpot since the April game changes
Big jackpots mean big sales, and Mega Millions has a lot to prove.
In April, the game increased its ticket prices from $2 a ticket to $5, stoking fears that sales would flag. The new features also included bigger prizes at non-jackpot tiers, slightly improved odds, a larger starting jackpot, and more. A new, random multiplier up to 10X is applied to every ticket.
The sales may have initially taken a hit, but Johnston is confident that the big jackpots will make the changes worthwhile. He cited changes in 2017, when ticket prices increased from $1 to $2. Johnston recalled:
We saw a similar pattern when the game's ticket price last changed in 2017, but once the jackpot reached a significant amount, players returned to the game, new players began buying tickets, and the sales and jackpot curves began to spike. We expect the same thing will happen now.
The climbing jackpot also arrives on the heels of a massive Powerball win of $1.8 billion, which increased lotto sales across the country.
Smaller prizes are in the spotlight
Under the new gameplay, Mega Millions is touting smaller-tier winners. These include 24 new millionaires since the changes, and hundreds of thousands of winners who have benefited from a random 10X multiplier. Johnston said:
What's also exciting is how much all our non-jackpot winners have won along the way, thanks to the built-in multiplier in the new matrix. We've never paid out prizes at this level before, and players are really noticing.
Nobody won $1 million or more in Friday's drawing. Ten people won $5,000, and 31 people won $2,000 using the 10X multiplier.
If the jackpot keeps increasing, more smaller-tier winners should emerge. This means more lives changed, more retailer commissions, and more state funding. Everyone benefits from a big jackpot.
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