“There is a jackpot ticket that was sold in Illinois,” Ohio Lottery Commission spokeswoman Marie Kilban told the Washington Post. The jackpot on the Mega Millions site is now $20 million. It is the third time in two decades that the jackpot has exceeded one billion dollars. According to Mega Millions, the one-time payout for Friday’s jackpot is estimated at $747.2 million. The winner can choose to take it or have the entire jackpot paid out in installments over 29 years, according to the BBC. The numbers on the winning ticket were 13, 36, 45, 57 and 67, as well as a Mega Ball of 14. Interest was so great that the Mega Millions website became inaccessible due to the “high volume of traffic” following the draw on 11 on Friday night. The jackpot was close to record levels after 29 consecutive draws without a winner with one ticket containing all six winning numbers. The last winning ticket was sold in Tennessee when the jackpot was $20 million on April 15. According to the California Lottery, a ticket holder in the state won $2.9 million Tuesday for matching five numbers but didn’t get the Mega number. The jackpot at the time was $830 million. The record jackpot won in Mega Millions lottery history was in October 2018, when $1.537 billion was won by a ticket holder in South Carolina. The one-time payment at the time was $878 million, according to CBS News. The winner has remained anonymous. The jackpot also crossed the billion-dollar mark last year, when four members of a lottery club in suburban Detroit, Michigan won $1.05 billion. They also remained anonymous. Previous winners have bought homes, settled debts and helped the areas where they lived. But others have been devastated by their gains as newfound wealth has led to anxiety and fear, The Post reports. The Mega Millions lottery is played in 45 states, as well as Washington, DC and the US Virgin Islands. Alabama, Alaska, Hawaii, Nevada and Utah do not participate. A ticket holder’s chance of winning Mega Millions is about one in 303 million — they’re 70 times more likely to be killed by a shark and 216 times more likely to be struck by lightning this year, according to The Post. Harvard statistics lecturer Mark Glickman told the paper that the chance of winning increases as more people buy tickets. “Once the pot gets to that range, there are enough people playing and chances are someone will pick the right numbers,” he said.
