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The Mega Millions jackpot climbed to $1.25 billion on Friday as the national lottery entered its 31st weekly drawing without a big winner.
No ticket across the country matched all six numbers drawn Tuesday night, lottery officials said. The next drawing will be Friday, with the prize money estimated to be more than $1 billion — the fourth-largest jackpot in Mega Millions history.
The winner would take home about $625.3 million in cash. The last jackpot was won in New York on April 18.
“There’s always an air of excitement around the country when Mega Millions jackpots soar,” said Gretchen Corbin, the lead director of the Mega Millions Consortium, in a release.
The total number of winning tickets increases with the jackpot, with Tuesday’s drawing producing 4,904,910 winners in the nation across varying prize tiers, according to Mega Millions.
Seven tickets matched five of the numbers drawn Tuesday, winning the lottery’s second-tier prize. One ticket sold in Texas is worth $4 million. Two tickets, worth about $1 million, were sold in California.
The odds of a California ticket winning it all in Friday night’s jackpot is 1 in 302,575,350. The chances of matching five of the numbers drawn is better at 1 in 12,607,306. Overall odds of winning any prize are 1 in 24, according to California Lottery.
“Whenever we see jackpots this high, it gets exciting for our players of course, and also California’s public schools,” Carolyn Becker, a California Lottery spokesperson, said in an email statement. “For every Mega Millions ticket sold in California, 80 cents goes right to education. That’s why the California Lottery exists.”
The national lottery game has awarded only four jackpots of more than $1 billion since it began in 1996. The winning years were 2018, 2021, 2022 and 2023.
The largest prize in the game’s history, won in South Carolina in 2018, totaled $1.537 billion. The largest jackpot won in California was worth $648 million in 2013.
Drawings are held every week Tuesdays and Fridays at 11 p.m. Eastern time in Atlanta.
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