News writer; Opinion columnist
It's been over three long months since anyone has claimed a Mega Millions jackpot, and the top prize has grown to nearly half a billion dollars!
A player who picks all five white numbers and the Megaball for the August 16 drawing will win $464 million, which is the 14th-highest jackpot in the game's history. Taken as a lump sum payout, the prize would be worth approximately $228 million after taxes.
But how much higher can it go, and how many times does it need to roll over to reach one billion dollars?
Last winner
The last Mega Millions jackpot winner was an anonymous player in Illinois who won $552 million on June 4, 2024. Their winning numbers were 19-37-40-63-69 with a Megaball of 17.
The winner before that took down a cool $1.128 billion from the March 26, 2024 drawing, with the numbers 7-11-22-29-38 and Megball 4 with a ticket purchased in New Jersey. Interestingly, as of August 15, no one has stepped forward to claim this massive prize yet.
We've seen winners wait months to claim jackpots as they assemble the accountants and financial advisors they'll need to manage their fortune. According to Mega Millions rules, this player has 7.5 months remaining to collect their prize.
Second best
While no one took home the jackpot from the August 13 drawing, it wouldn't be accurate to say that no one won. In fact, a total of 864,401 players cashed in tickets worth almost five million dollars in prizes.
The drawing's top prize winner collected one million dollars for correctly picking the five white numbers but missing the Mega Ball number. They're probably kicking themselves for not spending the extra dollar to add the megaplier to their ticket, which would have pushed their prize to four million dollars.
An additional 17 players won at least $10,000 for correctly picking four white numbers, but four of these players actually took home $40,000 because they added the megaplier.
At the bottom of this secondary prize pyramid are over 590,000 players who at least won back the price of their ticket by correctly picking the Mega ball number. However, over 120,000 of them boosted their winnings with the megaplier.
Billion with a b
While $464 million is an exciting prize, some players aren't interested in the game until the jackpot reaches one billion dollars.
It's impossible to predict precisely when the game will reach a ten-figure top prize because the jackpot growth depends entirely on the number of tickets sold before each drawing. However, we can get a good idea of when it will happen by looking at the rate of increase for past games.
The starting jackpot for any Mega Millions drawing is $40 million. In the game's early stages, the prize typically grows by $10-20 million after each drawing without a winner. Once the jackpot moves past the $300 million mark, it usually increases by $20 million after each drawing. When the jackpot surpasses $500 million, growth jumps to approximately $75 million between drawings.
If that pattern holds true, then it will likely take between 6 and 8 more drawings without a top prize winner for the current jackpot to reach one billion dollars. Because Mega Millions drawings take place twice a week, the jackpot should reach this level sometime in mid-September.
Time to play?
It's been a slow year for Mega Millions jackpots, with only two winners claiming the top prize so far. If this pace keeps up, 2024 will have the fewest jackpot winners in the history of the game, beating out the years 2020 and 2018, which featured just five winners each. However, 2018 did feature the biggest prize in Mega Millions history when a South Carolina player won over $1.5 billion.
Whether you're ready to pick up a ticket for the August 16 drawing or you're waiting until the top prize tops a cool billion dollars, your odds of winning are 302,575,350 to 1, regardless of the prize value.
The next Mega Millions drawing will occur on August 16 at 11:00 PM EST.
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