OMAHA, Neb. — Disappointed you didn’t win the Powerball jackpot this weekend? Don’t be.
Lottery officials say the prize has now swelled to an estimated $1.3 billion – the world’s largest. Ever.
“Biggest jackpot in the history of the world. Absolutely confirmed,” Texas Lottery executive director Gary Grief said.
The jackpot is so big that billboards around the country have to advertise the prize as $999 million because they’re not built to show billions. The lottery computers will handle the decimal point without a problem.
No one matched all six Powerball numbers Saturday night, leading to the huge prize. And that is all but certain to grow before the next drawing Wednesday, according to lottery officials.
“We’ve never been at these levels,” said Grief, whose state lottery is part of the Multi-State Lottery Association that runs Powerball.
The odds to win are one in 292.2 million. Seventy-five percent of all the possible combinations were purchased before Saturday’s drawing, Grief said, and he expects that enough tickets will be sold to cover about 80 percent by Wednesday. About 95 percent of Powerball tickets have computer-generated numbers.
“I’ve been in the industry over 20 years, and I’ve seen jackpots hit when we hardly have any of the potential numbers covered – like 5 percent of the possible combinations covered. And I’ve seen other jackpots when we’ve had 95 percent of the combinations covered and it rolls,” Grief said.
The jackpot has ballooned since its Nov. 4 starting point of $40 million.
In Omaha, Les Wheeler said he probably overdid it by buying $30 worth of tickets for Saturday’s drawing with a few friends, but they plan to do the same for this next jackpot.
“I didn’t expect to win, but I had big dreams,” Wheeler said. He said a new home in a state away from Omaha’s 16-degree temperatures topped his wish list.
Saturday’s winning numbers – 16-19-32-34-57 and Powerball number of 13 – did gain some people a little wealth: 25 tickets won $1 million by matching five numbers, and three other tickets won $2 million because they paid extra to multiply smaller prizes.
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