$1.35B Mega Millions Jackpot: When To Buy Tickets In Illinois

ILLINOIS — Mega Millions players in Illinois are rushing to buy tickets Friday in hopes of winning the estimated $1.35 billion Mega Millions jackpot, the second-largest prize in the game’s history.

No jackpot-winning tickets were sold for Tuesday night’s drawing. The winning numbers for the Jan. 10 drawing were 7, 13, 14, 15, 18 and the Mega Ball was 9. Drawings are held at 10 p.m. Central Time on Tuesdays and Fridays.

To participate in Friday’s drawing, players in Illinois must purchase their tickets by 9:45 p.m.

Although jackpot winners can choose to be paid through an annuity, with annual checks over 29 years, nearly all take the cash payout. For Friday’s drawing, that’s an estimated $707.9 million.

Friday night’s jackpot is the second-largest in the history of the game. The game’s record prize of $1.537 billion, was won in South Carolina on Oct. 23, 2018.

A player in Illinois claimed a $1.337 billion ticket in the July 29 drawing after purchasing a ticket at Des Plaines convenience store. 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 cause 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 Tuesday, Jan. 10, drawing, 16 players matched the five white balls to win the game’s $1 million second-tier prize.