Powerball Jackpot Soars to $1.4bn after Wednesday’s Drawing

Played in nearly 50 US states and jurisdictions, Powerball is America’s favorite lottery. Drawings of the game occur on Mondays, Wednesdays and Saturdays. For more than 30 consecutive drawings, there has been no winner of the jackpot prize from Powerball. This enabled it to grow to the mind-blowing $1.4 billion for the upcoming drawing scheduled for Saturday, October 7, 2023.

The $1.4 billion jackpot becomes the third-largest grand prize in the history of the game. The jackpot falls short of the $1.59 billion jackpot that dropped back in January 2016, which was the second largest prize and the staggering $2.04 billion jackpot that was won in November last year in California, the largest prize to date.

The odds of winning the Powerball jackpot are 1 in 292.2 million but if a winner is lucky enough to hit it, they will have an option to collect the whole sum via an initial payment and 29 annual installments. On the other hand, if the lucky winner selects a cash option, they can collect a lump sum of some $643.7 million. Whichever option is selected, the lucky player needs to know that this is the sum before taxes.

It wasn’t long ago when the fourth-largest jackpot dropped. This happened back on July 19 this year, when a lucky player from California scooped up the hefty $1.08 billion grand prize. Earlier this year, another major Powerball jackpot was won. This was back in February when a lucky winner collected the $754.6 million grand prize at the time.

Drawing on Wednesday Sees 3.2 Million Winning Tickets

While the odds of winning the jackpot from the Powerball sound slim, more than three million players secured a prize within the different prize tiers from the game’s latest drawing. Nobody was able to match all six white balls 9, 35, 54, 63, 64 and the red Powerball 1, but seven tickets matched all white balls, securing a $1 million prize each. There were two winning tickets in California and Texas, while Connecticut, Pennsylvania and New York saw one winning ticket each. On the other hand, three lucky players paid an extra $1 for multiplier and collected a $2 million prize each.

Within the lower prize tier, 81 lucky players guessed correctly four white balls and the red Powerball, granting them a $50,000 prize each. Some 13 players paid extra for a Power Play prize, which resulted in them taking $100,000 each.

Overall, there were more than 3.2 million winning tickets from the Powerball drawing on Wednesday. Not unexpectedly, the biggest number of winners guessed correctly the red Powerball, a total of 1,723,161 that collected the lowest-tier prize of $4.