why Powerball and Mega Millions jackpots aren’t reaching giant amounts anymore


If you’re one of those people who only buys a lottery ticket when the jackpot climbs into the stratosphere, you could be waiting a while.Get more news about 牛博包网公司,you can vist nb68.com

The Mega Millions jackpot for Tuesday’s drawing is $86 million, and Powerball’s top prize is $91 million for its drawing on Wednesday. While those would be life-changing windfalls for most winners, the amounts pale in comparison to some claimed in the past — including two worth more than $1.5 billion, one each in 2016 and 2018.

On the heels of pandemic-related stay-at-home orders and shutdowns earlier this year, officials for both games announced in early April that starting jackpots would no longer be $40 million, nor would there be a minimum increase between drawings ($5 million for Mega Millions and $10 million for Powerball) if there was no top winner. While those changes were made after the pandemic hit the U.S. economy, ticket sales for both games already had been slowing before the $1.5 billion Mega Millions jackpot was won in October 2018, said Gordon Medenica, lead director of the Mega Millions Consortium and Maryland’s lottery director.

Ticked sales dropped “in the year following that jackpot by 40%, even before the pandemic,” Medenica said. “Sales are down another 10% this year, which we attribute to general ‘jackpot fatigue.’”

He also said the games generally don’t receive the media coverage and publicity they once did.

Powerball sales have rebounded from March but remain about 20% below pre-pandemic levels, according to information provided by the Powerball Product Group.So far this year, five tickets have hit Mega Million jackpots worth an aggregate $881 million, including one for $414 million in June that had been growing since February. In 2019, seven were won, worth more than $2 billion. And in 2018, the total value of the five jackpots hit was $3.2 billion.

For Powerball, seven jackpots this year worth $1 billion in total have been won — including $396.9 million in late January, which had been rolling over since November 2019 — compared with seven in 2019 worth about $1.7 billion and nine in 2018 worth $3.5 billion.

Generally, the higher a jackpot climbs, the more tickets are sold. From 2012 through 2018, sales surged 72% when the Mega Millions jackpot reached $350 million and 294% once it hit $550 million, according to a study from personal finance site ValuePenguin. The research showed similar results for Powerball sales.