History could be made tonight when six numbers are called out in the Mega Millions lottery, with the lucky winner pocketing an estimated $1.58 billion prize — the largest in that draw’s history.
Should someone win, they would have the option of cashing out for a $783.3-million lump sum or taking a 30-year annuity for the total prize.
The jackpot is the third largest in United States lottery history, surpassing the previous $1.537 billion total a South Carolina woman won in 2018. That anonymous person, however, took home a larger lump sum of $877.78 million. Last November, a California man won the largest jackpot, a Powerball draw worth $2 billion, with a ticket bought in Altadena; he claimed the prize in February.
Winners have up to one year to claim their prize.
Ticket purchases will be cut off at 7:45 p.m., ahead of the drawing at 8 p.m. The drawing will be streamed live on the Mega Millions YouTube page. The multi-jurisdictional lottery is offered in 45 states, the District of Columbia, and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
Tickets cost $2 each and winners must match five white balls numbered between 1 and 70, as well as one golden Mega ball numbered between 1 and 25. The odds of correctly selecting all six winning digits are roughly 1 in 302.6 million.
Carolyn Becker, California Lottery deputy director for public affairs and communications, said the odds are consistent since they’re derived from the total number of possible combinations drawn.
“Those odds don’t change no matter how high the jackpot or how many people play,” she said in a phone interview Tuesday. “More players means more people trying to get a piece of those odds.”
Globally, no jackpots have come close to the prizes offered in the United States.
European prizes do not compare. The Italian SuperEnalotto jackpot this February paid out a European record of 371.1 million euros, or roughly $396 million.
China’s biggest prize was given in June 2012, when a single winner claimed 570 million yuan, which was the equivalent of $89 million. The largest jackpot in Australia’s Oz Lotto was awarded in November 2012 and netted 111 million Australian dollars, which was equivalent to roughly $115.76 million. Brazil’s greatest Mega Sena national jackpot was won in December when five winners split 542 million Brazilian Real, which was then just over $102 million combined.
Today’s Mega Millions tally also dwarfs other gambling records.
An anonymous Los Angeles man claimed the largest Las Vegas slot machine payout in March 2003 when he cashed in on a jackpot of $39.71 million, according to Guinness World Records. The 25-year-old software engineer hit on a Megabucks slot machine at the Excalibur Hotel & Casino.
Iranian Antonio Esfandiari clinched the largest World Series of Poker prize in 2012, outlasting English player Sam Trickett for an $18.3-million purse.
Famed British gambler Harry Findlay bet approximately $227,000 in online bets to capture a roughly $3 million prize in May 2007, the largest horse-racing payout in history.
His countryman, Steve Whiteley, won a little less without wagering nearly as much. The then-60-year-old horse player correctly guessed on six straight winners in March 2011 and turned his roughly $3 bet into a total prize of nearly $2.4 million, the largest pool bet prize in horse racing history.
This story originally appeared on LA Times
