»Maine wins the first $1.35 billion Mega Millions jackpot award«
A ticket purchased in Maine matched the winning numbers for the lottery’s projected $1.35 billion grand prize, marking the state’s first Mega Millions jackpot. The winner also avoided the bad luck associated with Friday the 13th.
The winning combination of numbers was 30, 43, 45, 46, 61, and the gold Mega Ball 14.
The winner, whose identity remains unknown, overcame odds of 1 in 302.6 million, which resulted in three months of drawings without a jackpot claim.
“Congratulations to the Maine State Lottery, which has just won its first-ever Mega Millions jackpot,” Pat McDonald, director of the Ohio lottery and chief executive officer of the Mega Millions Consortium, said early Saturday in a statement.
The jackpot was the second largest in the history of Mega Millions, and the fourth time a billion-dollar prize has been won. In October 2018, the greatest Mega Millions jackpot was $1.53 billion, won by a single ticket purchaser from South Carolina.
It was also the seventh occasion that a grand prize winner was selected on Friday the 13th, a date deemed unlucky by superstition.
To collect the whole $1.35 billion, the winner would be need to receive annual installments for 29 years. The majority of jackpot winners select the reduced but faster cash option, which for Friday night’s drawing was approximately $724.6 million.
The next grand prize drawing will be held on Tuesday for an estimated $20 million and $10.7 million in cash.
Prior to Friday night, 25 consecutive drawings had passed without a jackpot winner.
More than 7 million winning tickets were distributed across nine reward levels on Friday. In addition to Maine’s jackpot, 14 tickets matched five white balls to win the $1 million second-tier prize. Mega Millions said that four tickets were sold in New York, two in California, and one each in Florida, Illinois, Kansas, Kentucky, Missouri, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Texas.
The Mega Millions lottery is played in 45 states, the District of Columbia, and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
In November, a single Powerball ticket sold in the Los Angeles metropolitan region won the highest payout in the history of the lottery: $2.04 billion.
In October 2018, a single South Carolina ticket won the record-breaking Mega Millions jackpot of $1.53 billion. And in July, a ticket purchased in Illinois won the third-largest Mega Millions jackpot ever, provided Friday’s numbers hold.
1 in 302.6 million is the probability of winning the Mega Millions jackpot
»Maine wins the first $1.35 billion Mega Millions jackpot award«