$1.1B Mega Millions Jackpot: When To Buy Tickets In Illinois

ILLINOIS — The odds of winning an estimated $1.1 billion Mega Millions jackpot are long, but so is the hope among ticket buyers in Illinois for Tuesday night’s drawing.

No jackpot-winning tickets were sold for Friday night’s drawing. The winning numbers for the Jan. 6 drawing were 3, 20, 46, 59, and 63 and the Mega Ball was 13. Drawings are held at 10 p.m. Central Time on Tuesdays and Fridays.

To be included in Tuesday’s drawing, players in Illinois must purchase their tickets by 9:45 p.m.

This is the largest Mega Millions jackpot on offer since July last year when a single ticket bought in Des Plaines scooped the largest prize ever won in-State of $1.34 billion. If a player wins Tuesday’s massive grand prize, it would be the third-largest Mega Millions prize won in the game’s history.

Although jackpot winners can choose to be paid through an annuity, with annual checks over 29 years, nearly all take the cash payout. For Tuesday’s drawing, that’s an estimated $568.7 million.

The game’s record prize of $1.537 billion, was won in South Carolina on Oct. 23, 2018.

Outside of the Illinois winner last July, the only other Mega Millions jackpot worth more than a billion dollars was claimed by a player in Michigan on Jan. 22, 2021.

Long streaks without a winner allow jackpots to grow larger week after week. The last time the Mega Millions jackpot was claimed was Oct. 14, when two winners in San Jose, California, and Fort Myers, Florida, shared in a $502 million jackpot.

Some of the other big Mega Millions jackpots include:

• $656 million, shared by three players in Illinois, Kansas, and Maryland in March 2012
• $648 million, shared by two players in California and Georgia in December 2013
• $543 million, won by a California player in July 2018
• $536 million, won an Indiana player in July 2016
• $533 million, won by a player in New Jersey in March 2018
• $522 million, won by a player in California in June 2019

Although weeks without a winner causes the jackpot to grow, Tuesday’s is still a far cry from the record $2.04 billion Powerball jackpot won in California on Nov. 8. The player has yet to come forward to claim the prize.

The Powerball game also claims the second-largest lottery jackpot in U.S. history, but barely. A $1.59 billion prize in January 2016 was shared by three winners in California, Florida, and Tennessee.

The odds of winning the Mega Millions jackpot — about 1 in 302.6 million — don’t increase with a flurry of ticket sales. But they are better than the odds a meteor will hit your house, according to a report from Business Insider. And the odds of a perfect NCAA basketball bracket chosen by a coin flip are 9,223,372,036,854,775,808, or 1 in 9.2 quintillion.

Although no one claimed the jackpot in the Friday, Jan. 6, drawing, five players matched the five white balls to win the game’s $1 million second-tier prize. Two $1 million tickets were sold in New York, and one each was sold in Florida, Maryland, and New Jersey.

Across the country, 115 tickets matched four white balls plus the Mega Ball to win the third-tier prize. Fifteen of those tickets are worth $30,000 each because they included the optional Megaplier (available in most states with an extra $1 purchase), which was 3X on Friday night. The other 100 third-tier winning tickets are worth $10,000 each.

Prior to last year’s big winner in Illinois, the most recent Mega Millions winner in the state cashed in a year earlier when a resident who chose to remain anonymous won $55 million (38 million in cash) in 2021 in Crestwood.

In 2017, Patricia Busking of Palos Heights won $393 million two years after John Williams and Neal Logue of Blue Island won $262 million and Jesus Devila, Jr. of Naperville won $265 million.

Mega Millions is played in 45 states as well as Washington, D.C., and the U.S. Virgin Islands.