Community Corner
$2B Powerball Jackpot Won, Game Ends In Wisconsin
Wisconsin DID see a few $50,000 Powerball winners recently, but it was ultimately another state who struck gold from Monday's game.
*Editor's Note: This story has been updated. We previously reported that there was no winner of the Powerball jackpot, but lottery officials say one person won in California. We regret the error.
WISCONSIN — A winning ticket was sold in California for the $1.9 billion Powerball jackpot at the Monday, Nov.8, drawing that had lottery players in Wisconsin and the rest of the country dreaming about what they’d do with all that money.
It is a lot of money, the biggest prize ever in U.S. lottery history. The numbers were 10, 33, 41, 47 and 56, with a Powerball of 10.
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Players had to wait nearly 10 hours until Tuesday morning to check their tickets after “technical difficulties,” lottery officials said. When ticket sales had finally been calculated, the jackpot, originally estimated at $1.9 billion, had swelled to $2.04 billion.
The frenzied pace of ticket-buying didn’t “break” Powerball Monday night. Rather, game officials said the delay came after one of the participating state lotteries was unable to process its sales data.
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“Powerball requires all 48 participating lotteries to submit their sales and play data prior to the winning numbers being selected,” the Multi-State Lottery Association said in a statement. The organization declined to say in which state the delay occurred.
Monday's prize is only the fourth U.S. lottery jackpot to surpass $1 billion, but none of them came close to the current jackpot. The odds of winning it were daunting — 1 in 292.2 million — no matter how many tickets were sold.
Prior to Monday, no one had claimed the prize since Aug. 3.
A Powerball ticket costs $2. For an additional $1 per ticket, players can multiply non-jackpot prizes by up to 10 times with the Power Play feature. One caveat: The 10X multiplier is only available when the advertised jackpot annuity is $150 million or less.
To win the jackpot, a player must match all white balls in any order and the red Powerball number. Lottery officials say chances are higher when players don’t choose their own numbers. About 75 percent of winning tickets over the years were picked by a computer.
Drawings are held three times a week, at 9:59 p.m. on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.
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