RELEASE DATE: 11/27/2024
For just the fourth time this year, the Mega Millions® jackpot has topped the half-billion mark! After no ticket matched all six numbers drawn Tuesday night – the white balls 5, 22, 24, 39 and 42, plus the gold Mega Ball 3 – the jackpot rolls to an estimated $514 million ($241.0 million cash) for the next drawing on Friday, November 29, the day after Thanksgiving. The jackpot has been growing since it was last won at $810 million in Texas on September 10.
Before that 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.
While there’s still a little more than a month left in 2024, never before in the game’s history have only three jackpots been won through November of any year. It’s a sharp contrast to 2023, when 10 Mega Millions jackpots were won, more than any year since the game had a major matrix change in October 2013. It truly is a random game, and anything can happen!
Although the jackpot remains elusive, there were still big winners Tuesday night. Matching the five white balls for the game’s second-tier prize were two tickets sold in California and one in Louisiana. The latter prize is worth $3 million because it included the optional Megaplier (available in most states with an extra $1 purchase), which was 3X Tuesday night.
There were plenty of other winners in the November 26 drawing – a total of 891,687 winning tickets in all non-jackpot prize tiers. Across the country, 19 tickets matched four white balls plus the Mega Ball to win the third-tier prize. Five of those are worth $30,000 each because they also included the optional Megaplier; the other 14 take home the standard $10,000 each.
In the 22 drawings of this current jackpot run, there have been more than 12.5 million winning tickets sold. These include 34 second-tier prizes of $1 million or more, won in 15 different jurisdictions from coast to coast: California, Connecticut, Florida, Louisiana, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, New Jersey, New York, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia.
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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