If you feel like you’re planning on what you would buy with $1 billion more frequently than normal, you aren’t losing your mind, as Mega Millions’ latest $1.1 billion jackpot is one of six to be up for grabs in the last half-decade.
After another drawing resulted in no winners on Friday, the Meg Millions jackpot has hit $1.1 billion, putting the jackpot at the third largest in the game’s history.
The size of the prize is no strange outlier, as last year saw several instant billionaires. This included a lottery player in California winning Powerball’s $2 billion jackpot in November, and two Illinois players winning a $1.3 billion Mega Millions jackpot in July — however, the ticket went unclaimed until September.
Victor Matheson, a professor of economics for the College of the Holy Cross, shared with CBS News that heftier jackpots are becoming more frequent, and it isn’t by coincidence.
Matheson said that the Multi-State Lottery Association has purposefully engineered games it organizes, like the Mega Millions, so bigger jackpots become more common.
This includes changes to the rules, requiring players to choose from more numbers, and reducing the likeliness of winners, according to a 2018 report from the Washington Post. Other changes included the MUSL making Mega Millions a national game and increasing ticket prices from $1 to $2.
According to Matheson, all three of the changes have impacted the odds of winning the jackpot and resulted in it growing faster from week to week.
Add to that those who are more likely to play when jackpots grow close to $1 billion, and Matheson said that Mega Millions has put together the perfect formula to increase participants.
Even still, winning the jackpot and taking home the money is increasingly rare, so you may not want to bet on putting your plans of spending it into action.
“To put it into perspective, the typical person who is a golfer would have about a 1-in-15,000 chance in making a hole-in-one on a particular hole,” Matheson said. “So winning the Powerball or the Mega Millions is like getting two hole-in-ones in a row when playing golf.”
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