Scott McFetridge, Associated Press
Des Moines, Iowa (AP) — Lottery players will shoot another $1 billion jackpot and slightly better odds under the new mega million rules that will come into effect in Tuesday’s painting.
However, improvements are costly. Literally, players will have to pay $5 per ticket. This is more than twice the previous price. Meanwhile, the jackpot is expected to grow much larger and at a faster rate, with officials expecting sales to rise as large prizes stop on the truck.
“People want a really big jackpot,” said Joshua Johnston, Washington State Lottery Director, who leads the Mega Millions Games. “We expect to see a sales lift on this.”
How is Mega Millions changing?
The biggest change is a ticket price hike of $2 to $5. Lottery officials are hoping that Jump will increase revenue from games twice a week, and expect it will reduce the chances of winning a jackpot from one in 303 million to one in 290 million.
High ticket prices mean that the Jackpot can start at $50 million instead of the previous $20 million, and the Grand Prize is expected to grow faster. Whenever there are no big winners, the jackpot jumps to the larger mark. Officials expect it will often exceed the special attention-grabbing $1 billion threshold.
The new rules also increase prizes for tickets that don’t match all six numbers, with fewer winners guaranteed at least $10. Each ticket contains a randomly assigned multiplier that allows you to increase your prize up to 10 times. Multipliers do not apply to jackpots.
Will this make it easier to get a jackpot?
Yes, but that’s still incredibly unlikely: the odds of 1 in 290 million people still don’t be badly. And that’s true if you buy one ticket or 100.
“When you hear one in 290 million people, there’s no sense of what that means. There’s a greater sense of the fact that there are wins,” said Tim Chartier, professor of mathematics and computer science at Davidson College. “And while it’s true that it’s possible, the problem is that it’s extremely unlikely.”
How unlikely? According to Chartier, even under the new rules, the chance to hit a jackpot is similar to choosing one second for nine years. He said he never risks a few dollars at those odds.
Why does the game change?
The new rules have two main goals to address what the industry calls “jackpot fatigue” and to distinguish Mega Million from Powerball.
Jackpot fatigue is a phenomenon in which most players have to grow to a huge amount of prizes before they can buy and buy a few tickets. Recently, a $300 million prize once painted lines at Mini Mart.
With the new rules, authorities expect the average winning jackpot to rise from around $450 million to $800 million, Johnston said. And they believe that even lottery fatigue doesn’t match the more frequent billion-dollar awards.
“When you get to one billion people, it’s like, ‘Oops, that’s a lot of money,'” Johnston said.
Lottery officials said Sandy Yeman of Omaha, Nebraska, has a clear correlation between the larger jackpot and the higher sales.
“I’m happy with $1 million so others are happy,” she said. “One person who won $50 million is ridiculous.”
How rare is the $5 ticket price?
Mega Millions will be the most expensive lottery draw game in a country where random numbers are chosen to determine the winner.
Still, its prices are much lower than the scratch tickets offered by some states. For example, in Texas, some scratch tickets cost $100 each.
Outside the US, the Spanish Ergordo Christmas lottery limits the number of tickets sold, charging 20 euros for partial tickets and 200 euros for full tickets.
The higher prices for the Mega Millions leave Syedis Williams in East Point, Georgia, and are not sure if they will continue to buy multiple tickets a week. “I think one ticket is now $5, so I’ll buy one ticket a week,” he said.
How about Powerball?
After the new rules were implemented, there are some important differences between the two lottery games that were once very similar.
The biggest contrast is cost as Powerball requires a $2 ticket and a $3 ticket in Idaho and Montana.
That low ticket price will be smaller with a minimum prize, starting at $4 or less, or less than half of the lowest mega million award. However, Powerball players can pay extra dollars for “Power Play,” a random multiplier that can increase everything except the Grand Prize, like Mega Million.
The Powerball drawings continue three times a week on Monday, Wednesday and Saturday nights, while the Mega Millions will hold the drawings on Tuesday and Friday.
This change brings the jackpot odds for the two games a little closer, making the Powerball Jackpot odds a little worse than the new Mega Million odds of 1/292.2 million.
Let me remind you, what is the point of all this?
For players, it’s a chance to spend a bit of money on dreams of incredible abundance, acknowledging the reality that it’s almost certainly not going to happen.
For the US Virgin Islands where 45 states and Washington DC, and Mega Million is played, the game raises money for a variety of services, such as educational scholarships. Local lottery agencies run games in their respective jurisdictions, and decisions on how profits are divided are written in state law.
Associated writer Margery A. Beck contributed to the story from Omaha, Nebraska.
Original issue: April 7, 2025 10:01am EDT
