By Dawn Sawyer and Dalia Faheid, CNN
A Mega Millions lottery ticket is purchased at a liquor store in Hawthorne, California. Photo: Frederic Brown / AFP
One Mega Millions ticket sold in Northern California has won an estimated US$1.22 billion (NZ$2.16b) jackpot - believed to be the fifth-largest prize in the history of the game, the lottery says.
The ticket - the first to win the jackpot in over 100 days - matched all six winning numbers: 3, 7, 37, 49, 55 and Mega Ball 6.
Friday's (local time) Mega Millions jackpot amounts to US$549.7m in cash. The prize surged since its last drawing on Christmas Eve when no winner took home the estimated US$1b jackpot. Friday's grand prize was previously estimated at US$1.15b but grew ahead of the highly anticipated drawing.
The winning ticket was sold at Sunshine Food & Gas in Cottonwood, Shasta County, according to the California State Lottery.
It's only the fourth Mega Millions jackpot won in 2024 and just the seventh time in the game's history that the jackpot has soared past US$1b.
The six others were awarded in South Carolina in 2018, Michigan in 2021, Illinois in 2022, Maine and Florida in 2023 and New Jersey in March. The Florida prize is the game's record jackpot at US$1.6b.
Five other tickets sold in Arizona, California, Texas and Missouri won US$1m each in Friday's drawing by matching the first five numbers, the lottery said.
"Congratulations to our $1.22 billion jackpot winner from California," Joshua Johnston, lead director for the Mega Millions Consortium, said in a news release.
"What an amazing present this holiday season! At an incredibly special time of year, this is both an incredibly special moment for our winner and for all the great organisations and causes that benefit from lottery ticket sales around the country."
With only one more drawing this year, odds are that the year will end with the fewest jackpots won in any single year since the game started in 2002, according to the lottery. Only three other people have won this year, down from 10 jackpots awarded in 2023.
On 10 September, a Houston-area resident claimed the last jackpot, US$810m, after purchasing the winning ticket at a gas station convenience store in Sugar Land.
Before that, a US$552m jackpot was taken in Illinois on 4 June and a US$1.13b prize was won in New Jersey on 26 March.
The jackpot for the New Year's Eve drawing on Tuesday resets to the starting value of US$20m. There has never been a Mega Millions jackpot win on New Year's Eve, according to the lottery.
Chances of winning the lottery are minuscule, experts say
Since Mega Millions began, there have been 217 jackpots won by 244 individual tickets.
The chances of winning any prize in the lottery game are 1 in 24, according to the Mega Millions website, but the odds of winning a jackpot are 1 in 302.5 million.
Concerns have been raised by researchers that the chances of winning the Mega Millions are not only minuscule, but that state lotteries also siphon funds from impoverished communities under the guise of a chance to acquire wealth.
A study by the Howard Center for Investigative Journalism found that in 2022, stores selling lottery tickets were disproportionately located in the impoverished communities of every state, with proceeds going to far away colleges and wealthy school districts, rather than their community.
According to the company's press release, half of the proceeds from each lottery ticket remain in the state where the ticket was sold to support "good causes and retailer commissions".
In 2022, the Howard Center study found that ticket sales had grown from US$47b to US$82b, generating more revenue than corporate income taxes in 10 US states.
Tickets are priced at US$2, with players in most jurisdictions given the option to pay an additional dollar to multiply their non-jackpot prizes. The company announced in October that the price will more than double in April 2025, as they promise bigger prizes in return. Each ticket will be US$5.
Winning numbers for the jackpot are announced every Tuesday and Friday on the Mega Millions website.
- This article was first published by CNN
