At least one Mega Millions player has plenty of dough to ring in the New Year after drawing the winning number on Friday night.
After three months without anyone winning the top prize in the lottery, a ticket worth an estimated US$1.22 billion was sold in California for the drawing, the Mega Millions Web site showed.
The total jackpot would only be distributed to a winner who chooses an annuity paid over 29 years. Nearly all grand prize winners opt to take a cash payout, which for Friday night’s drawing is an estimated US$549.7 million.
Photo: AP
Despite the game’s long odds of 1 in 302.6 million, players continued to purchase tickets as the size of the grand prize grew. Until Friday, the last time a Mega Millions player hit the top prize was on Sept. 10.
The high number evoked headlines and likely lured more people to convenience stores with dreams of private spacewalks above the Earth.
It did not seem to matter that the nation’s top 10 jackpots, not including Friday, already boasted 10-figure payouts. For many, something stirs inside when a number ticks one dollar above US$999,999,999.
“The question lurking is, what happens when US$1 billion becomes routine and people don’t care about it anymore?” said Jonathan D. Cohen, author of the 2022 book For a Dollar and a Dream: State Lotteries in Modern America.
“There’s no easy round number after a billion,” Cohen said. “But also, how much money can one person possibly, possibly, possibly need?”
Cohen wrote in his book that lotteries have existed in one form or another for more than 4,000 years.
In Rome, emperors and nobles held drawings at dinner parties and awarded prizes that ranged from terra cotta vases to people who were enslaved. As early as the 1400s, lotteries were used in Europe to fund city defenses and other public works.
Sweepstakes were common in the US colonies, helping to pay for the revolution against Britain. Cohen wrote that Thomas Jefferson approved of lotteries, calling them a tax “laid on the willing only.”
Lotteries began to fall out of favor in the US in the 1800s because of concerns over fraud, mismanagement and its effects on poor people. However, starting in the 1960s, states began to legalize them to help address financial shortfalls without raising taxes.
“Lotteries were seen as budgetary miracles, the chance for states to make revenue appear seemingly out of thin air,” Cohen wrote.
Mega Millions’ first jackpot started at US$5 million, when it opened in 1996 as “The Big Game,” involving only six states. The value of that original payout would be nearly twice that today accounting for inflation.
In today’s dollars, the before-taxes prize could buy a rare copy of the US Constitution or cover Michael Soroka’s US$9 million contract to pitch next season for the Major League Baseball’s Washington Nationals.
By contrast, the pretax winnings from Friday’s Mega Millions prize could theoretically buy a Major League Baseball team. The Nationals would be too expensive, but Forbes recently valued the Miami Marlins at US$1 billion.
These days, Mega Millions and its lottery compatriot Powerball are sold in 45 states, as well as Washington and the US Virgin Islands. Powerball also is sold in Puerto Rico.
Games with massive payouts tend to be more popular despite the slimmer odds, while larger jackpots also attract more media attention, increase ticket sales and bring in new players, Cohen said.
Lottery officials have allowed the odds to become lower with a larger pool of numbers to pick from, making games harder to win and leading to payouts rolling over into even larger prizes, he said.
The first US$1 billion jackpot was in 2016. Cohen said he expects the upward trajectory to continue.
Meanwhile, he warned against the tropes of the troubled or bankrupt lottery winner.
A well-known example is Andrew “Jack” Whittaker Jr. He won a record Powerball jackpot after buying a single ticket in 2002, but quickly fell victim to scandals, lawsuits and personal setbacks as he endured constant requests for money, leaving him unable to trust others.
Most winners do not turn out like him, Cohen said.
“Even if we deny it, we all sort of believe in the meritocracy — this belief that if you won your money through luck, then you probably didn’t actually deserve it,” Cohen said. Yet various studies have shown “lottery winners are happier, healthier and wealthier than the rest of us.”
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