The jackpots keep rising and rising. Then, one day, without anyone winning, they go back down to the minimums (not at the same time, but both games do this). Can you tell me how this is determined?
The Mega Millions jackpot was $143-ish million yesterday, and today it’s back down to $15 million.
Not that I play the lottery or anything…
Someone won. It’s as simple as that.
They may not know WHO won, but they know the winning numbers were issued somewhere. In terms of the $149MM winner, the ticket was sold in Pennsylvania.
Oh, I see. So no winner is listed on the Indiana site–I guess it just lists Indiana winners.
Duh, my bad!
That $15 million is the initial jackpot amount. Or $1 million or so for the individual state lotteries. Then it starts growing based upon sales of tickets.
And when they say that they have $15 million in the jackpot, they don’t, they really only have half that amount. This half is what they give you when you take the cash option pay out. Then you pay a big chunk of taxes on this half jackpot and end up with about 2/3 or less of half a jackpot. If you want to get the full jackpot amount you have to take the annuity pay out over 25 years or so.
So don’t get excited about the next $200 million dollar jackpot, they don’t really have $200 million laying around to give you. It is just a bit of creating advertising, or lying if you prefer the direct wording.
Well, okay. I could live on that.
Yes - imagine how heartbreaking it would be to only win many tens of millions.
Over here the winner of the Euro Millions gets the lot, in one go, tax free.
£190m is about $321m at todays rates - less back then.