RELEASE DATE: 11/30/2024
Just in time for the holidays, the Mega Millions® jackpot is reaching a level rarely seen during the month of December! After no ticket matched all six numbers drawn Friday night – the white balls 3, 29, 34, 37 and 38, plus the gold Mega Ball 17 – the big prize rolls to an estimated $541 million ($257.6 million cash) for the next drawing next Tuesday, December 3. If won at that level, it would be the 12th largest prize in the game’s history.
While there have been 13 December jackpot wins since Mega Millions began in 2002, only one was for more than the current estimated prize of $541 million. A $648 million jackpot was shared by winners in California and Georgia on December 17, 2013. And it’s only the third time a Mega Millions jackpot in excess of $500 million has even been offered during the month of December – two years ago, the jackpot surged past that amount as it grew towards the whopping $1.3 million eventually won in Maine on January 13, 2023.
While the jackpot grows – it was last won at $810 million in Texas on September 10 – so does the number of winners across all other prize tiers. In the 23 drawings of this current jackpot run, there have been almost 13.4 million winning tickets sold. These include 35 second-tier prizes of $1 million or more, won in 16 different jurisdictions from coast to coast: California, Connecticut, Florida, Louisiana, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, New Jersey, New York, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia.
In the November 29 drawing alone, there were 854,056 winning tickets across all non-jackpot prize tiers. One ticket, sold in Oregon, matched the five white balls for the game’s $1 million second-tier prize. Around the country, 22 tickets matched four white balls plus the Mega Ball to win the third-tier prize. Six of those are worth $20,000 each because they included the optional Megaplier (available in most states with an extra $1 purchase), which was 2X Friday night; the other 16 take home the standard $10,000 each.
Before that September 10 prize in the Lone Star State, the Mega Millions jackpot was won only twice earlier this year. A $552 million windfall was awarded to an Illinois online player on June 4, and a whopping $1.128 billion prize still awaits a ticket-holder in New Jersey; no one has yet come forward to claim that jackpot from March 26. If not claimed, this ticket will expire on March 26, 2025, and the unpaid prize will revert back to each participating Mega Millions jurisdiction.
Note: Prize amounts in California will vary, as they are calculated on a pari-mutuel basis.
Mega Millions is the only lottery game that has produced six jackpots greater than $1 billion. All were won in different states – South Carolina was the first in 2018, followed by Michigan in 2021, Illinois in 2022, Maine in early 2023, Florida last August and New Jersey in March. The Florida prize on August 8, 2023, is the game’s current record jackpot at $1.602 billion.
Tickets are sold in 45 states, Washington, D.C., and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Tickets are $2 each; in most jurisdictions, players can add the Megaplier for an additional $1 to multiply their non-jackpot prizes. Half of the proceeds from the sale of each Mega Millions ticket remains in the state where the ticket was sold, where the money supports designated good causes and retailer commissions.
Drawings are conducted at 11 p.m. Eastern Time on Tuesdays and Fridays in Atlanta, Georgia. The overall odds of winning any Mega Millions prize are 1 in 24; the odds of winning the jackpot are 1 in 302,575,350.
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