Nearly $1.4 Billion Up For Grabs In Weekend Powerball And Mega Millions Drawings

Today’s lottery fun fact: If you buy one Powerball ticket and one Mega Millions ticket, your odds of winning both are 1 in 88,426,769,730,374,300.

Hey, it’s better than your chances of filling out a perfect March Madness bracket if you flip a coin for every game! (But not by much.)

Don’t get greedy, though. Just be satisfied to win either the Powerball jackpot or the Mega Millions grand prize. Either one will leave you set for life at their current dollar amounts.

$792 million one night, $600 million the next

The Mega Millions jackpot hasn’t been hit since Dec. 8 and Powerball was last won on Jan. 1, meaning both prize amounts are creeping their way toward 10-digit territory.

For Friday night’s Mega Millions drawing (11 p.m. ET), the estimated jackpot is $792 million, which equates to $381.8 million if a sole winner takes the cash option instead of the annuity.

Powerball’s Saturday night drawing sees a jackpot estimated at an even $600 million, with a lump-sum cash value of $293.4 million.

There’s still quite a way to go before Powerball approaches its all-time record amount of $2.04 billion, set on Nov. 7, 2022, when Edwin Castro of California had the lone winning ticket.

The Mega Millions record is starting to come within view, though. The high water mark of $1.537 billion was claimed by an anonymous winner in South Carolina after the Oct. 23, 2018 drawing.

At a combined $1.392 billion in jackpots currently available to be won, Powerball and Mega Millions sales shouldn’t be suffering from much “lottery fatigue” at the moment.

Tickets for either lottery cost $2, plus a $1 option to play the multiplier, and a grand prize win requires a perfect six-for-six match on the numbers drawn.

Both lotteries are available in all states except Alabama, Alaska, Hawaii, Nevada, and Utah.